Clean Water and Sanitation (Africa)

Pauline Latham Excerpts

Thursday 21st April 2016 Westminster Hall

[Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

It is a delight to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Percy. I did not know that you had been made a Chairman. I am delighted to see someone from our intake—you are possibly the first—become a Chairman in the House.

[Andrew Percy (in the Chair)]

Some have greatness thrust upon them.

[Pauline Latham]

Absolutely. Congratulations.

I also congratulate the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) on securing the debate. It is a shame it happened to come on a Thursday afternoon when everyone is desperate to get home, but it is an important debate. I apologise if I repeat things that he said, but I am completely deaf in one ear and 50% deaf in the other since I had a really bad cold. I cannot clear it. Although I listened as much I could, I did not hear very much of what was said, so my apologies if I repeat anything.

[Jim Shannon]

Is it my accent?

[Pauline Latham]

Just this once, it was not the hon. Gentleman’s accent that confused me, but the fact I could not hear. That is my problem, and I apologise.

Clean water is one of the fundamental things that we expect to have. In this country, we have had it for donkey’s years. but we recently saw the problems in the north-west when water was contaminated for some time. One suddenly realised how much we take it for granted in this country that we can wash and use the washing machine and probably the dishwasher. We can have a shower or bath or clean our teeth with no worries at all. That incident showed the population of Britain that we use a huge amount of water without thinking about it.

For those in a developing country—we know that almost a third of the global population lack access to sanitation facilities and more than 660 million people lack access to clean water—it is a daily problem that they have to live with and deal with. We see so many young people dying under the age of five because they do not have access to clean water or sanitation. We and many other countries accept water as something that we can use at any time, and we should be looking to help the countries affected. Other countries have to look themselves at improving clean water facilities, but it is incredibly difficult. Where does a President or a Government start if people have no decent housing, no clean water, no or few sanitation facilities, no education and no good health facilities?

Without clean water, people cannot have access to education or decent healthcare. I have seen some hospitals where there is no running water—how can a hospital facility have no running water? How can things be kept clean? Even in the Crimean war, Florence Nightingale understood that the one thing needed in a hospital is cleanliness and sanitation. That was a very long time ago, but some countries in Africa do not have that facility, and that is totally shocking.

I am pleased to see that sustainable development goal 6 is the aim of achieving universal access to safe water and sanitation by 2030, but 2030 is not very far away—only 14 years. We have been involved in international development for many years, as have many other countries, non-governmental organisations, charities and individuals, along with diaspora communities that send money back. Why do some Governments appear to have little will to install decent water facilities? It is not difficult to do; it just needs a comprehensive plan.

As a member of the Select Committee on International Development, I have visited many countries in Africa where I have been shocked by the poor facilities that people have to live with. For instance, when we went on a visit to Burundi, we were embedded in a house right out in the sticks for 24 hours with no water and no sanitation. The only place to go to the toilet was where they had literally dug a hole specifically for me to go in. I found that rather embarrassing—not for me, but for them to have to do that. They did it, though, and the joke was that they made a wooden box for me to sit on so that I would not have to squat. They thought that as a westerner, I would not have been able to cope with that. It would not have bothered me, but they have to deal with that all the time, and I do not know that things are that much better now in Burundi. There are a lot of other problems there, but when there is conflict in an area, it makes things harder still, and not just for the people living there. How do Governments, if they are in conflict and there is a civil war, or whatever the situation is, deal with the country’s problems with water and sanitation?

I have spent a lot of my time in Uganda with a friend of mine who was a Member of Parliament there. Sadly, he lost at the last election; I do not think it was quite fair. He was very keen on helping his community have sanitation and water as well as decent health. He is a doctor, so he is very keen on health facilities, but he was struggling. I was able to go to Uganda at the beginning of this year, and I saw for myself the problems with malaria. There is no clean water. I went to a hospital that had no sheets on the bed. The parents and family members who had to go to that hospital with their children had nowhere to go to the loo. It was a state-run hospital, and I think that situation is pretty appalling. Some of the children who were in the hospitals I went to did not have malaria. They might have had dysentery or diarrhoea, which are relatively easy to cure if there is clean water and the right medication.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

The hon. Lady made an interesting reference to the pit latrine that she encountered in Burundi, but does she agree that those are the least of the problem? Within memory, people in this country had to use toilets at the bottom of their garden or chamber pots. Part of the problem is that there are too many parts of the world where people are still accustomed to defecating in the open, in fields, with all the hygiene problems that that causes.

[Pauline Latham]

I was going to mention that problem. I well remember living in Lincolnshire as a child and having to go down the garden to the toilet. There was a large seat for the adults and a small seat for the children. I did not mind doing that, because I had not known anything different. Of course, at night we had a chamber pot, and when it was freezing cold it was frozen in the morning. That is not that many years ago; I know I am old, but I am not as old as the Queen, although I suspect she never went down the garden to the loo. Nevertheless, I remember doing that, and it was something that one lived with. I remember having a tin bath in front of the fire with everybody around me—there was no hot water upstairs. I was tiny, but I do remember it. It has not been that many years since we solved the problem, but we have solved it.

As the hon. Lady says, one problem is open defecation. I described the hole in the ground in Burundi, and it was a tiny hole just for me, not for anyone else. The problem with open defecation is that people have to go into the bushes to get some privacy, so they are at risk of rape and all sorts of violence. Of course, when the rains come, all the sewage is washed through the villages, which is one of the biggest problems in many places. When the Select Committee went to South Sudan, we saw that was happening. The people in the refugee camp who had been told to leave Sudan and go to South Sudan—although they and previous generations had never lived there, they were considered South Sudanese, so they had to go and had walked there—had no toilet facilities and no water. People can go to collect water, but toilet facilities are a basic human right and everybody should have them. It is a huge problem.

[Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

The hon. Lady is making a number of interesting points. Interesting though this trip down memory lane is, for most of us these are memories, either distant or otherwise, because we recognise the need for proper sanitation facilities. Is it not right that the focus of the debate is on how we can work with others to ensure that everyone has access to those same facilities?

[Pauline Latham]

Yes, they should have access to those facilities.

The WHO and UNICEF joint monitoring programme has drawn up a ladder of WASH—water, sanitation and hygiene—facilities, ranked according to their degree of safety. The facilities fall into the following categories, from the most to the least safe. The safest are “safely managed” facilities, which include

“drinking water sources that are located on premises, and are free of faecal and chemical contamination. Private sanitation facilities where excreta are safely disposed are also included.”

That was what I had, because the night soil men used to come once a week to clear it out. That was absolutely safe, but it was still pretty basic, and people would not want to be doing it now. “Basic” facilities include

“piped water sources, protected groundwater sources (such as standpipes, hand-pumps and protected dug wells) within a 30 minute round trip of a household. ‘Basic’ sanitation facilities include flush, or pour-based toilet systems connected to a piped sewer or septic tank and contained pit latrines. Hand washing facilities with both soap and water are counted as basic”—

but without them, how can there be any sort of hygiene?

“Unimproved” facilities include

“unprotected groundwater sources, water provided by tankers, or water sources that are greater than 30 minutes-walk from a household. Shared sanitation facilities, uncontained pit latrines and handwashing facilities with no soap are also included.”

“Open defecation”, which is the worst and the least safe, is where

“human faeces are disposed of directly into the open environment”,

as the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) mentioned earlier.

When there is a move towards proper, contained pit latrines—not open pit latrines—that are emptied regularly, it is important that girls and boys at schools have separate facilities, because many girls say they cannot go to school because they are in danger of being raped in the toilets. If they cannot go to the toilet in private, that is horrific. Not only that, but if they have to share the facilities, they cannot go when they are menstruating because they find it embarrassing and are likely to be made fun of, so they need better facilities than most schools, particularly those in rural areas, currently have. They need that protection so that they feel safe and have privacy and can go to the toilet during menstruation and at other times without feeling threatened. That is not the only reason why girls do not go to school, but it is quite a large one.

Diarrhoea kills many under-fives, so there should be better testing and better, quicker medication. Mothers often think it is malaria when it is not. There are rapid diagnostic tests, but we all know that in some places in some African countries, the rapid diagnostic tests and medication do not get to pharmacies or health facilities. Better access would help many children to live much longer.

The Department for International Development is providing funding to the SHINE—sanitation, hygiene and infant nutrition efficacy—trial. People will have poor nutrition if they do not have clean water for mixing bottles or whatever. Mothers without clean water will also have problems before they have children. Many children either die before birth—stillbirths or spontaneous abortions—or have low birth weights or stunting. Children who have been stunted never catch up, so access to clean water is needed. I am pleased that DFID is providing £7.2 million of funding to support the SHINE trial that is currently under way in Zimbabwe, because that is another problem that children without clean water face—they seem to have one thing piled on top of another.

As I said earlier, I have worked very closely with a friend who was a Member of Parliament and a medical doctor. In his former constituency is a place that I know only as a landing site. It is on the lake between Kampala and Jinja. The people there spend their whole lives on the lake, because they are fishermen, fisherwomen and indeed fisherchildren—many of the children have to go out fishing and are exploited by their employers. They have water, but because it is not clean there is a lot of disease and stunting. They have very poor livelihoods. They drown in the water because they cannot swim—they are not allowed to, because the water is too heavily contaminated. They need their own borehole, because they have to walk miles to get to one, so of course they do not bother. More places should have at least a simple borehole so that people can access clean water.

I know about the importance of boreholes from my experience with a charity called Free The Children, which the Minister will know. I went out to Kenya with Free The Children staff to see what they were doing there. They are building health facilities and schools in communities, and they put a borehole next to schools so that the children—particularly the girls—can go to school and take water home in the evening. That saves an awful lot of worry for the parents, because they know that the water is clean and that their children are in school, so they are safe and getting an education. There are health facilities nearby to which the mothers can go for pre-natal classes and monitoring, so they are helped too.

There was something that I did not appreciate until I did it for myself. We walked a kilometre with the yellow cans that people put on their heads, although we had them on a rope band around our heads. I could not lift the large, 20-litre ones; I could not even get them off the ground. I managed to get a 10-litre one off the ground, but I could not physically manage to get it all the way back, so somebody had to help me. That was a lesson for me. I have been to countries where women and children walk miles to collect their water, but I had never thought of the weight. Not only is it not good for people to have it on their head, because it affects their neck muscles—although they are obviously more used to it—but the sheer weight of the can means that getting it home is problematic. Sometimes people have to do that 10 times a day to get clean water for their family. A big lesson for me was not just the distances that people have to walk but the weight that they have to carry. We have to encourage children to go to school; that has to be done better. If they have to have a water facility that requires them to carry the water like that, it is incredibly important that it is close to a school and/or a health facility. I am very pleased that DFID is doing a lot of work in that area.

We have to concentrate on water facilities and work with the charities that do such a good job of providing them, but we have to monitor them to ensure that they are being used and that people have access to spare parts. In some parts of the world, a facility can be put in, but unless the spare parts are easily available and simple to install, it will go into disuse. I have seen that happen in Africa. The International Development Committee went somewhere where there was a borehole and a pump, but the pump was broken so the people could not use it and had to go to the next one.

There are many things that can be done to help people in sub-Saharan Africa and the rest of the world to access water, but we need to act fast. If we are serious about giving everybody access to water by 2030, we have got only 14 years left, which is not very long at all. I thank the hon. Member for Strangford for securing this debate on this important subject. I am delighted that I have been able to take part in it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mr Percy. Although I am responding for the Scottish National party from the Front Bench, I would like to put on record the apologies of the SNP’s international spokesperson, my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady). He has important constituency work today, otherwise he would have been here; this is a cause he is very passionate about.

I thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for securing this important debate, which has been really good. I have a feeling that because he covered the issue so comprehensively, a lot of my comments will be prefaced by, “As the hon. Member for Strangford said earlier”. The two cases he mentioned at the end of his speech were very powerful and illustrated the need for further action on water and sanitation in Africa.

The hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham) certainly added to the debate, giving examples from Burundi, Uganda and South Sudan. She talked about open defecation in the fields and witnessing the sewage traversing towards villages, and that underpins the need for more action. I must say, I have learned more today about Members’ childhood toilet activities than I thought I would.

The hon. Member for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods) made some important points about the millennium development goals and learning lessons for the sustainable development goals. She made a powerful point about sub-Saharan countries being poorer now than in the 1960s.

The hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) presented some excellent examples from his personal knowledge of and involvement in projects. Importantly, he touched on the fact that small programmes and smart working are the way forward. There does not have to be big money. We hear about expenditure on headline projects and the overseas aid budget, but the way forward is to work smart and invest in small, sustainable projects so that communities can take ownership of them.

I am a civil engineer, and prior to being elected to this place, I spent my career in the water industry. I have always known the importance of clean water and sanitation in this country, let alone in the developing world. I used to do presentations in schools, and to try to capture the children’s imagination I used the example that the water infrastructure in this country saves more lives than the NHS. That is backed up by the fact that the World Bank has declared that hand-washing with soap is the single most cost-effective health intervention.

Hon. Members have touched on the fact that because we have a successful water and sanitation infrastructure in this country, many people it for granted. Some people complain about the taste of water if there is a slight change and do not realise that it is still perfectly healthy and provides great health benefits. They complain if they lose their water supply for three hours and cannot put their kettle or have a bath or shower, without realising that some people without water and sanitation face personal challenges every day.

It was when I worked for Scottish Water and its predecessor that I became aware of WaterAid and WaterAid Scotland, and I pay tribute to them. What struck me when I first went to a WaterAid presentation was the sustainability aspect of the projects it invests in, which struck a chord with me. That touches on the point the hon. Member for Stafford made about smart investment in sustainable projects. I am also impressed by the wider education that WaterAid is involved in. As my hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O'Hara) said, it is fantastic at engaging MPs and widening their education, but it goes further than that in its education programme.

I was pleased that earlier this year a school in my constituency, James Hamilton Academy, won WaterAid’s star supporters competition as a result of its innovative learning programme about water collection and sustainability. The project challenged pupils to think differently about water usage and to compare their usage with that of a child in the developing world. We can safely say that the pupils will no longer take their water supply for granted.

Another example of education was in October 2015 when a group of Scottish Water staff headed out to Zambia to visit WaterAid projects. They visited communities with and without access to safe water, which helped them to gain a real understanding of the challenges facing communities. Since their return, the Zambia team have delivered numerous presentations to their colleagues at Scottish Water. That became an ongoing education programme to spread the word.

Statistics highlight the importance of this debate. It is a basic fact that unclean water and the lack of basic sanitation prevents the eradication of poverty and disease globally, and particularly in Africa. It is well documented that water and sanitation are necessary for success in many other development areas, such as improving health, education and the prospects of women and girls.

In sub-Saharan Africa, only 68% of people have access to clean water and 30% to adequate sanitation. That means children in sub-Saharan Africa are more than 14 times more likely to die before the age of five than children in developed regions. In Uganda, 80% of the population does not have a safe place to go to the toilet. Every year, 500,000 children, most of whom live in Africa, die from diarrhoea caused by unsafe water and poor sanitation. That is more than one child every minute.

[Pauline Latham]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that is not a proud record for a President who has been in power in Uganda for more than 30 years? What progress has been made over the past 30-odd years? The President plans to carry on for ever. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the situation in that country is desperate?

[Alan Brown]

I agree with the hon. Lady. She obviously has a good understanding of Uganda, and I thank her for her intervention.

More than 9,000 children die every year in Ethiopia alone from diarrhoea caused by unsafe water and poor sanitation. Approximately 800,000 children aged between one month and five years died from pneumonia in 2013, and about 1,400 children die every day from preventable diarrhoea. Some 58% of diarrhoeal deaths are caused by unsafe water and poor sanitation and hygiene.

The effects of a lack of water and sanitation go much further than just disease, as other hon. Members have said. It affects all aspects of life and has a profound impact on women and girls in Africa. As we have heard, they are typically responsible for collecting water for their family, and girls spend as many as six hours a day collecting water, leaving them little time to go to school. In many places, schools are not located within villages or close to where people work, so if girls must travel for hours to collect water, they face the problem of having to travel for hours to go to school as well, so attendance is difficult.

Without a safe and private place to go to the toilet, many girls are forced to drop out of school when they start to menstruate. Many women and girls also have to wait until night to relieve themselves in the open, which causes further health problems and strips them of dignity. Many are harassed or even assaulted. A former work colleague of mine who went to India on a fact-finding mission gave harrowing accounts of women being raped as they went out at night to open fields to use as a toilet. Clearly, the same can happen in Africa.

A lack of clean water also makes it extremely difficult to give birth safely, and mother and child often do not survive. I would like to illustrate that point with one case. Aisha Mkude, who is 38, lives in Lugono village in Tanzania. Last year, she gave birth to her first son, who was born healthy. Aisha says she left the hospital feeling joyful, but just two days later her son got a high fever and started discharging smelly water from his belly button, so she returned to the clinic with him. She says:

“There wasn’t enough water at the health centre when I gave birth, resulting in him catching an infection.”

That was because after the birth, she had washed herself and her baby in water that her brother’s wife had fetched for her from the nearby river. It was the dry season, so she had to dig out part of the river to get water. Unfortunately Aisha’s son lived for only seven days, but if there had been regular availability of safe water at the health centre, that situation would have been prevented. She says:

“I feel so bad because I never expected this but because it has happened I will just accept it.”

She should not have to accept it, and that is the thrust of today’s debate. That example highlights the importance of WaterAid’s Healthy Start campaign, which brings into sharp focus the importance of water, sanitation and hygiene in improving the health and nutrition of newborns and children.

That example also illustrates why global action and co-operation are required in a wider context. To that end, we welcome the UN members signing up to the sustainable development goals, particularly goal 6—access to water and sanitation for all by 2030. It is vital that the UK Government set an ambitious and realistic agenda to help ensure that that framework of goals is achieved.

Other hon. Members have touched on this point, but investment in water, sanitation and hygiene is an extremely cost-effective way to spend the UK’s aid budget. We have heard about the 1:4 ratio—for every £1 spent on improving access to water and sanitation, an estimated £4 is returned. We also need to consider that according to the World Bank, total global economic losses due to inadequate water supply and sanitation services have been estimated at $260 billion a year. That illustrates the fact that it is imperative that suitable money be committed. At present, only 2% of UK bilateral aid goes to water, sanitation and hygiene. I put my name to a letter issued in the name of the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) calling on the Government to increase that percentage. It would be good if the Minister could give his thoughts on that.

The hon. Member for Strangford touched on the fact that the House is generally united on this subject, but I will make one criticism of the Government. Their overseas development aid needs to be concentrated on programmes relating to water and sanitation projects throughout Africa and elsewhere, instead of on defence. I am concerned that there is increasing double-counting of defence expenditure towards both the NATO targets and official development assistance, through mechanisms such as the conflict, security and stability fund. We should not blur the lines between aid and defence spending. The Government need to realign their moral compass and redirect aid towards those who need it most. The £1 billion conflict, security and stability fund, which the UK Government lists as overseas development aid, is not an appropriate use of UK aid spend. Indeed, in February 2016, Oxfam, Global Citizen and ONE called on Governments across Europe to ensure that aid budgets are used only for poverty eradication and sustainable development.

On a more positive note, I welcome the Government’s commitment to reach a further 60 million people with access to clean water and sanitation by 2020. I look forward to seeing how that will be advanced when the bilateral aid review is published. I suggest, however, that the Government could be even more ambitious.

In Scotland, the SNP-led Government are also committed to boosting water and sanitation projects in Africa, through their climate justice fund. In December 2015, Nicola Sturgeon announced £12 million of funding to help mitigate the effects of climate change on the world’s most vulnerable populations. That was a doubling of the climate justice fund. The head of Oxfam Scotland, Jamie Livingstone, said that

“the Scottish Government’s enhanced commitment to climate justice is very welcome—it increases the funding promised and creates much needed predictability.”

The work enabled by that fund has focused on clean water provision and is aimed at mapping pollution sources, which are very often sanitation facilities. The Scottish Government are working to position water and sanitation assets to maximise access and minimise cross-contamination.

A lot of good work is ongoing, and there is the ambitious aim to supply water and sanitation to all by 2030. As the hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire said, that is not far away, but I remind the House that even if we achieve that goal by 2030, there will still be millions of deaths before then, and that is why urgent action is needed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hurd]

My hon. Friend adds another texture—another layer of relevance that has not yet been mentioned in this debate—so he has added value.

Like the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, I will not go over the statistics again, because they have been given a good airing. However numb we have become in this House to the horror of much of what is happening around the world, it is still staggering that by the end of the day another 1,000 children under five will have died from a lack of clean water and basic sanitation, which is just not acceptable. Such deaths are utterly preventable. The drinking water of at least a quarter of the world’s population is contaminated with faeces, and more than 650 million people do not have access to a water supply close to their home. Those numbers are shaming, given what we take for granted. That ground was well covered in the debate.

I was also extremely encouraged to hear how many Members wanted to emphasise the particularly heavy burden that falls on women and girls, which matters a great deal to the Department. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire spoke powerfully about the huge physical burden on them. I lifted a water container in Goma, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and I was staggered by how heavy it was. I asked the ladies how far they had walked with it, and their answer was extraordinary. I also asked them about the risks they take in queuing and walking. The situation they face is genuinely shocking and unacceptable.

The human dimension has come through powerfully in the debate, but the economic dimension has not come up. Some clever people have attributed an economic cost to the lack of good water and sanitation at about $1.8 billion a year in Nigeria alone. Whether that is right or wrong, the human and financial cost is massively significant. So this issue matters, and I genuinely congratulate hon. Members on throwing a spotlight on it today. The good news is that we can do something about it. We have done something, but not enough. I will return to that, but it is worth noting that human endeavour has moved the needle in important ways.

The world met the millennium development goal for drinking water in 2010, and although the sanitation target was missed—I will return to that—2 billion more people had a toilet in 2015 than in 1990. Some countries have shown outstanding leadership in that context. For example, Ethiopia has reduced open defecation by 64% over the MDG period.

I am genuinely proud of the role that the UK has played over many years. It predates me and this Government, so I claim no credit for it. Between 2011 and 2015, we helped more than 60 million people to get access to water and sanitation, exceeding the coalition Government target. That has made a real difference to poor people’s lives in countries such as Ethiopia, Tanzania, Mozambique and Nigeria. Many Members have seen that for themselves in their visits and know how powerful and important it is.

In Ethiopia, we are working hard to support the Government to reach 31 million people with sustainable water and sanitation services. That includes ensuring that the services are resilient to future threats from climate change, because as many Members will know, the sustainability of such services is critical.

[Pauline Latham]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the money that DFID is putting into Sierra Leone post-Ebola will be incredibly important to it in moving forward? The fight against Ebola required a lot of water, and water is crucial for many countries to stop disease. Sierra Leone had many problems before Ebola, and obviously during the outbreak it had more. In Freetown, in the slum area, pigs, chickens and people can be seen sharing the same dribble of water along the main street. Until that situation is solved, Ebola could occur again.

[Mr Hurd]

This is freaky; my hon. Friend has obviously seen my speech, because my next point is on Sierra Leone.

In Sierra Leone our support has been crucial in a country that was so cruelly affected by Ebola. I look forward to seeing our support on the ground there in a forthcoming visit. Our support for solid waste management in Bo will create more than 300 new jobs. There are many dimensions to the support being provided that we need to understand and appreciate. We have been leading innovation in how to deliver water and sanitation programmes. Through the WASH programme we have reached nearly 5 million people, but we have paid the NGOs undertaking the projects only once we have independently confirmed that the services are in place. Of course, we are working in a context of extreme and quite understandable scrutiny of the value for money of what we do, so as we contract services we have to be more innovative in how we push to make sure that we pay for results and get value for money for the British taxpayer.

Oral Answers to Questions

Pauline Latham Excerpts

Wednesday 16th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I would argue that academy schools represent true devolution, because the parents, the governors and the headteacher end up having full control of the school and are able to make decisions about its future. If that does not convince the hon. Lady, I ask her to look at the results. She will see that primary sponsored academies have better records and are improving faster, and she will see that 88% of converter academy schools have been rated good or outstanding. This is true devolution: making sure that every headteacher is in charge of his or her school and providing the great education that we want for our children.

[Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

My constituent Jacci Woodcock has been diagnosed with terminal breast cancer. She has shown outstanding courage in her fight against the disease, but unfortunately she did not receive support or compassion from her employer, who wanted to dismiss her through capability procedures. Now her former partner, Andy Bradley, is trying to have the house that they own together repossessed, leaving her homeless while she is dying. Does the Prime Minister agree that we require better protection for working people who are diagnosed with terminal illnesses, and will he join me, and Jacci, in supporting the changes outlined in the TUC’s Dying to Work campaign?

[The Prime Minister]

The points my hon. Friend has made are absolutely right, and I will look very carefully at the case that she has raised. The truth, in all these things, is that as well as clear rules, we need organisations—employers, housing associations, landlords or, indeed, trade unions—to act with genuine compassion, and to think of the person, the human being, at the other end of the telephone.

Syria Crisis: UK Response

Pauline Latham Excerpts

Monday 8th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

The hon. Lady raises the important point that it is vital that countries that came and made promises at last week’s conference live up to them. Too often at similar meetings in the past, countries have spoken warm words or set out promises that they have not lived up to. The UK will play its role by delivering on our promises, as we have in the past and will in the future, and by putting in place the necessary transparency to enable us to ensure that other countries live up to the promises they made.

It is wrong of the hon. Lady to say that we have not played our role close to home. Our strategy from the word go has been to tackle the root causes of the crisis that we have seen reaching our own shores, which is to make it viable for refugees to stay close to home in their home region as that is, overwhelmingly, the first choice of most refugees. It has been a failure to deliver on such promises and to provide the necessary resourcing that has led them over time to give up on that.

We are playing our role close to home here in Europe. It is the UK that has been working with UNHCR and the Red Cross, making sure that newly arrived refugees are effectively registered—although the hon. Lady will understand the challenges that poses on occasion—and making sure that they have the shelter, clothing, blankets and sustenance that they need, having finally made that often fatal journey. So we are playing our role.

The hon. Lady will know that we are resettling 20,000 refugees from the region directly. That is not only a safer route for people to get to the UK if that is where they need to be resettled, but it enables us to focus on the most vulnerable people affected by the crisis who need to be resettled—people who could never otherwise make the kind of journey we have seen other refugees making across Europe. In more recent days we have set out the work that we will be doing particularly to help children affected by the crisis. I am very proud of the work that the UK has done to put children at the centre of our response to the Syrian crisis. It was at our initiative that the No Lost Generation initiative was set up. It was through our help that UNICEF has been able to put safe zones in refugees camps to help link up children who have become separated from their family. It is the UK that has been ensuring the availability of the psychosocial support that children so often need, having been involved in such crises and undergone the experiences that they have, and we will continue to do that.

More broadly, the hon. Lady’s condemnation of Russia is correct. We can debate whether and how the UK’s support for people affected by this crisis is working, but we should all be able to agree that the routine flagrant, deliberate breaches of international humanitarian law that we see daily in relation to this crisis are unacceptable. A country such as Russia should be playing its role by pressing the Assad regime, which it is spending so much time and resource supporting, to allow the aid that is there in places such as Damascus to get down the road to the people who desperately need it. I believe that in time, as we look back on the crisis in the years to come, that breach of international humanitarian law will be one of the most telling aspects of it. People will ask themselves how it could have been allowed to go on.

[Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

May I commend my right hon. Friend for her calm and factual statement on the situation of the Syrian refugees, which contrasted with the rather emotive statement by the shadow Secretary of State, who is trying to whip up emotion about these things? Does my right hon. Friend agree that, actually, we do need peace in the region, we do need to talk to Russia about what it is doing, and somebody needs to tackle Assad? We should also be looking at keeping as many people as possible in the area where they have been brought up, where their culture is correct and where they understand the lifestyle, rather than encouraging them, as the Labour party might choose to do, to come to this country, when we are putting so much money—taxpayers’ money—into helping these people to settle there.

[Justine Greening]

These are two related issues. One, as I have said, is that we are, of course, playing our role close to home—here in Europe—in helping refugees who have finally arrived on our shores. However, my hon. Friend is right to recognise that, overwhelmingly, refugees basically want to stay close to home. I met a lady on my last trip to Jordan whose family were still in Homs, and she had intermittent contact with them. For her, the prospect of even considering leaving Jordan was totally not what she was looking at; what she desperately needed was to be able to work legally to support herself while she tried to get on with the life she suddenly found herself living.

As I said, at the beginning of this crisis, none of the refugees thought that they were leaving Syria for anything more than a few weeks or months, and we should all think about how we would cope with such situations. It is incumbent on the international community, though, to make sure that we now go beyond providing just day-to-day support, so that people are not just alive but able to have some kind of life. That is in their interests, but it is also in the interests of the host communities, which are so generously accommodating them.

Oral Answers to Questions

Pauline Latham Excerpts

Monday 8th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)]

8. What support his Department is making available for the use of brownfield sites.

[Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

9. What support his Department is making available for the use of brownfield sites.

[Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)]

15. What support his Department is making available for the use of brownfield sites.

--- Later in debate ---

[Brandon Lewis]

My hon. Friend is right to say that we want to make sure we are protecting the green belt, and the national planning policy framework does just that. This £2 billion fund will make that brownfield land more attractive, as will planning permission in principle, once the Housing and Planning Bill goes through. This is about making sure we do everything we can to get those brownfield land areas developed for the benefit of our local communities.

[Pauline Latham]

Celanese is a very large brownfield site in Spondon in my constituency that is not included in Derby City Council’s core strategy, because it says that it will not be ready for development until at least 2028. The company on the site, however, says it will be ready by 2018. Does the Minister agree that local authorities should be doing more to utilise these sites through the funding that the Government have announced is available and increasing their efforts to make things ready for development?

Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria

Pauline Latham Excerpts

Tuesday 12th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries, for the first time not just during this Parliament but since I have been here. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) and colleagues on securing the debate, because the issue is incredibly important at this time. He talked about the generalities of the funding, but I will focus on a specific case, because although the Global Fund is fantastic, its eyes and ears cannot be on every single problem in the world.

I recently returned from northern Uganda, where I visited Gulu and Pajule in Pader, which are experiencing a huge problem with a malaria epidemic. Even the in-country director of the Malaria Consortium, the organisation I travelled with, was shocked at the level and scale of it. Women and children are dying in huge numbers, including babies aborted and stillborn during pregnancy after their mothers contracted malaria. Hospitals there are completely overwhelmed. The best hospital that I visited—the Lacor hospital, a private, non-profit Ugandan hospital whose mission is to guarantee affordable medical services, particularly to the most needy—was admitting up to 500 children into a 100-bed area, meaning that children were sleeping three or four to a bed and under the bed. Their parents were there as well. It is causing huge problems.

That is a really good hospital: it has bedsheets, which are pretty rare in many hospitals there. I saw one child of about three who was fitting badly due to cerebral malaria. I suspect that that child is no longer alive. The mother and other mothers were all attending around the bed, plus the doctors and nurses. That institution is doing the best that it can in incredibly difficult circumstances. Another hospital I visited, a state hospital, had no bed nets or sheets, and the mattresses were so decrepit that no one over here would put a dog on one, never mind lie on it themselves. Most facilities that I saw had no water. How can anybody recover when basic hygiene is not available to the doctors and nurses?

There are also huge pressures on hospitals when families go there too, because they must feed the families as well as feeding and looking after the patients. There is no patient confidentiality, because the patients’ families are there, and when patients are three to a bed, other families listen in as well, but the doctors and nurses say that they desperately need the families to come, because they do not have sufficient staff. It seems to me that the system in Uganda is failing to provide adequate healthcare.

Wherever we went and whatever health facility we visited, the statistics were the same, because spraying had stopped. Residual indoor spraying stops the epidemic, which has now gone through the roof. In one place, the number of cases had decreased to 33 a month by last April, but by May, it had rocketed to 1,500. No health facility, however well prepared, could cope with such a jump. Stock-outs of drugs are not unusual. The director-general of health told us that there was no problem, but she was discussing statistics that were a year out of date.

Hospitals treat 100% of patients with fever in malaria-type facilities, despite the fact that probably only 85% of them actually have malaria, which is not helping the issue of drug resistance. The problem is that drugs are funded, but diagnostic tests are not.

[Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)]

Order. I am sorry, but I must call the next speaker.

Oral Answers to Questions

Pauline Latham Excerpts

Wednesday 16th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

Not only is our aid policy helping to improve the prospects and the lives of millions of people in poverty around the world, but it is in our national interest. I have just talked about how what we are doing is important for UK security and international security, but it is also important in terms of prosperity. The international rules that the hon. Gentleman talks about can be a key way of enabling prosperity through allowing freer trade, which can help developing countries to trade their way out of aid dependence.

[Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

What is DFID doing to stop the problem with malaria in the north of Uganda, which I am going to visit over the new year? I know that DFID is working hard there, but will she tell the House specifically what it is doing?

[Justine Greening]

We have a range of programmes, including in Uganda, that have helped with the cheap intervention of providing bed nets. We have seen over the past 15 years that the number of deaths from malaria has fallen by two thirds, which is important because some countries spend 40% of their health budget purely on responding to malaria.

Tropical Diseases

Pauline Latham Excerpts

Tuesday 27th October 2015 Westminster Hall

[Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mr Davies. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) for securing this debate on a topic that is very close to my heart. Although I am going to focus on malaria, we must not forget the many neglected tropical diseases that my hon. Friend outlined. He and I have worked closely on international development issues for a number of years, as well as in the all-party group on malaria and neglected tropical diseases. We expect to continue that work during this Parliament.

It is clear that the work the UK is doing to tackle malaria is having a huge effect. Through a mixture of UK aid, British business, British-led research and non-governmental organisations, the UK has contributed to reducing the global malaria death rate by 60% since 2000. In the previous Parliament, the UK acted in a number of ways to tackle malaria and other diseases, as my hon. Friend outlined. Our financial and political support for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, our support for the Gates Foundation’s efforts to eliminate malaria, our work mapping malaria to establish high-risk areas to focus on, and our bilateral work on helping in-country healthcare systems to respond effectively to malaria and other diseases have all had a real, positive effect.

Although we can be proud of our contribution to tackling malaria and other tropical diseases, we must not become complacent or slow down our efforts. If we do, we risk reversing our momentum. Despite all the progress that has been made, malaria remains a substantial global killer, and women and children still overwhelmingly feel its effects. I could say an awful lot about the fact that women and children are disproportionately affected because they cannot access medicines or get to the clinics easily. Children who do not go to school because they have got malaria have worse life chances than those who go to school all the time.

Given the limited time available, I will focus on the situation in Uganda, a country I have focused on for many years and have a real interest in. Access to medical care to treat malaria and other diseases is poor in areas such as rural northern Uganda. Women and girls are even poorer there. I recently had a meeting with Alison Hall, the founder of Seeds for Development, to discuss the urgent situation in northern Uganda, where there is a major malaria outbreak. Her charity has been on the ground in northern Uganda working with farming communities to help rebuild their lives after the 20-year war with the Lord’s Resistance Army. She has been there for about six years. Three of the districts the charity works in are among those affected by the malaria outbreak. The Department should look immediately at the situation she described to assess whether there is anything we can or should be doing to help.

In the middle of July, Dr Jane Ruth Aceng, the director general of health services in Uganda, admitted that tens of thousands in northern Uganda have recently contracted the disease. Many people cannot afford to travel the long distances required to get to the hospital, and those who do are overwhelming the services due to the outbreak. One hospital—Gulu general hospital in the Gulu district of northern Uganda, which Seeds for Development visited to assess how patients are being treated—padlocks shut its outpatients department at 4 pm, leaves patients outside the door and provides nowhere for them to be treated inside. The charity was also told that St Joseph’s hospital in Kitgum, which is supported by DFID, recorded 125 deaths from malaria between June and August, which is much higher than normal. That is just one hospital, not the true picture. Clinics had run out of drugs, and new supplies were taking a long time to arrive. In August, there had not been a delivery of drugs for a month.

We need to look urgently at the situation in northern Uganda to establish the facts and act on them. In particular, I am worried about the lack of access to treated mosquito nets in northern Uganda. We provide financial assistance to the Ugandan Government to provide nets, so why are families in the region not receiving them? I understand that the Ugandan Government stopped its indoor residual spraying of huts programme in 2014. That one act alone will increase the risk of malaria. If the local people get nets, do they know how to use them? Nets often go astray—they are used for fishing and all sorts of other activities—so there has to be an education programme to teach people how to use them. It is very important that women and children sleep under the nets to save their lives. That important issue has been highlighted as among the causes of the current outbreak in northern Uganda.

The UK has a huge amount to be proud of in the way we have taken a lead on combating malaria. We know that the return on investment in tackling malaria is well established and accepted by the Government. However, we alone cannot defeat malaria. It requires a global effort, financially and politically supported by Governments around the world, including those of the countries affected. A lot has been done, but the outbreak in northern Uganda, where hundreds if not thousands have died this year alone, shows that we must not become complacent. I hope the Minister will explain what DFID is doing to help those affected in that region. I understand that DFID acts responsibly in many areas of Uganda, but that area seems to have been neglected, and I would like to know what the Minister can tell us about what is happening.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Grant Shapps)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) on securing this debate; I do so out of more than just the usual courtesy, as I also wish to commend him for his tremendous work on the Select Committee on International Development and for his chairmanship of the all-party group on malaria and neglected tropical diseases, which is one of the most effective APPGs in this House. It is well respected, frequently convenes high-quality debates and produces extremely influential reports. His knowledge and expertise have been acknowledged by hon. Members from across the House this morning.

The opening words of the “leave no one behind” pledge—many of us were at the United Nations General Assembly last month where that global promise was signed—are:

“We commit to putting the last first.”

Today’s debate is therefore welcome and timely. Malaria and NTDs affect the poorest of the poor. Every year, neglected tropical diseases affect the lives of over 1 billion people, causing disability, disfigurement, stigma and an estimated half a million deaths, as we have heard. Malaria still kills more than 400,000 people a year, mostly children in Africa.

Since the start of this Parliament I have visited seven different African countries; the hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane) will be pleased to hear that I have been taking not Lariam but Malarone. My most recent visit was the week before last, to Nigeria—the hon. Member for Edmonton (Kate Osamor) will be interested to hear that—where I discussed these very issues. This morning, I returned from the United Arab Emirates; as the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Stuart Blair Donaldson) mentioned, the UAE is one of the latest countries to be declared malaria free, so I had interesting discussions there as well.

My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham) asked what the UK is doing to tackle the resurgence in malaria—in Uganda in particular, although we must be watchful everywhere. As she will know, DFID has provided a significant amount of support to Uganda to try to reduce malaria. The recent outbreaks are of significant concern, and she is absolutely right to raise them. We are responding.

DFID is supporting the distribution of long-lasting insecticide-treated nets, along with capacity building for healthcare workers for the management of fever, specifically in the 10 most affected districts. We are working in partnership with the World Health Organisation to improve the availability and use of high-quality data for decision making—my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Dr Mathias) rightly raised the subject of data—and, through the UK’s significant contribution to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, life-saving anti-malarials are being made available to health facilities across the outbreak areas, as a key strategy for reducing transmission.

We are going further, by building on recent analysis by the WHO. DFID has agreed to fund a study—my hon. Friend will be pleased to hear this, as will the whole House—that will provide robust data on the possible causes of the outbreak, to inform the response and, most importantly, learn valuable lessons that we can then use in future programming as we take further decisions on the issue. I will meet the global fund leaders on 9 November, when I will raise that important issue. Through the strong monitoring mechanisms that we always have in place for our programmes, we will also take a close look at the issue of bed nets. I assure hon. Members that that will be a top priority.

The UK has been at the forefront of delivering progress against malaria and NTDs. By tackling them, we prevent pain, suffering and death, and we help to reduce poverty.

[Pauline Latham]

I am sorry to go back to the issue of northern Uganda, but will the Minister please tell me what is going to happen about the stock-outs of drugs? Are we going to flood the area with drugs to make sure that the people who need them actually get them? They are not getting them at the moment.

[Grant Shapps]

As my hon. Friend is aware, we are contributing up to £1 billion over three years—2014 to 2016—to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. She has my undertaking that I will raise that specific point when I take part in the meeting on 9 November. In addition, my officials are listening to the debate, and we will endeavour to take the issue forward as speedily as possible. We do not want any delay, and she has my absolute commitment that we will process this as fast as possible.

I would like to make three important points—about resources, results and partnerships. On resources, as hon. Members have discussed, the UK committed an additional £195 million in December 2012 at the London declaration on NTDs. I want to update Members, and particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford, about the declaration. It brought together key leaders from health and development organisations, along with industry partners, and they pledged to tackle the 10 NTDs. Its third progress report was launched in London in June, and the DFID Minister of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Mr Swayne), spoke at the launch. The report indicated the growing number of countries that are meeting their targets.

None the less, there are challenges that threaten our ability to meet WHO road map 2020 targets, and we will all need to step up our efforts to do more. The road map and the London declaration have been game-changing events for NTDs, but the short answer to the questions my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford posed is that, although good progress has been made, there is much more to do. DFID and the British Government will take a lead in making sure that that happens.

At this point, I pay tribute to Members on both sides of the House. In the debate, there has been—almost uniquely, compared with many of our debates—a noticeable degree of cross-Chamber support for the action being taken. That assists the UK in making a full contribution.

We are fulfilling our commitment, and we have expanded our existing NTD programme. As my hon. Friend will be aware, five years ago the UK spent less than £200 million annually on tackling malaria; as has been recognised in the debate, the figure is now well over £500 million. As has been said, tackling such diseases is among the best buys in global health—I had not heard the statistic that £1 brings back £36. Each year, malaria costs the African continent at least $12 billion in lost productivity.

That is why national Government leadership in the endemic countries is critical. The domestic focus in those countries must be on increasing measures to tackle malaria, and Governments must ensure that they put in resources themselves. Ensuring that that happens is a constant battle—a battle I frequently go out and fight to make sure we are all truly sharing the burden. National legislators have an important role to play in making the case for increased health budgets, including for NTDs and malaria. I call on those partners to step up their actions. It is in their countries’ interests to do so, because—quite apart from the very sensible humanitarian reasons—enormous savings can be made.

Let me move on to my second point: results. Just last month, the Secretary of State spoke in the House at the global launch of the report on the malaria millennium development goal target. The report indicated the tremendous progress that has been made, which many Members have mentioned. Since 2000, an estimated 1 billion insecticide-treated bed nets have been distributed in Africa, and malaria mortality has almost halved in just over a decade. That is a huge achievement, and the UK can be proud of her contribution, but there is clearly a lot more to do. One in four children in sub-Saharan Africa still lives in a household without at least one insecticide-treated bed net or other effective protection against mosquitoes, but such things should be the bare minimum.

Sustainable Development Goals

Pauline Latham Excerpts

Thursday 10th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Stephen Phillips) on securing this important debate. I am rather disappointed to follow the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady), given that he chose—it is unusual in this sort of debate—to bring in party politics from Scotland. Actually, we are all trying to do the right thing by people around the world. It is not about Scotland being separate from the United Kingdom; it is about the whole United Kingdom. That is what Ministers in the Department for International Development are working towards.

I want to make two main points: the importance of placing the protection of biodiversity and nature within the new goals; and the human and economic benefits of doing so. These points relate both to the forthcoming summit on the sustainable development goals and to the conference in December at which UN member states will adopt a new agreement to tackle the threat of climate change.

I agree with the Government that the new goals must be people-centred and planet-sensitive. Environmental and development agendas have often been looked at separately, so this new change in approach is important. It helps tackle a criticism of millennium development goal 7—on ensuring environmental sustainability—which was ineffective because it was not mainstreamed into the rest of the framework. The Government are rightly aiming to ensure that environmental sustainability is mainstreamed right through the post-2015 framework.

Anyone who has ever been to sub-Saharan Africa will know the paradox that in an area with awe-inspiring examples of natural beauty there can be massive abuse of the environment alongside poverty. There is a way of improving the latter while preserving the former. A central theme of the new sustainable development goals is prosperity; ensuring that human beings can enjoy prosperous and fulfilling lives and that economic progress occurs in harmony with nature. Goal 8 includes the aim that by 2030 Governments will have devised and implemented policies to promote sustainable tourism that creates jobs and promotes local culture and products.

The potential of tourism as a vital source for economic and development power that can strengthen and expand economies has not yet been fully realised. A 2014 World Bank report showed that tourism in Africa alone could create 3.8 million jobs over the next 10 years. Tourism in sub-Saharan Africa is growing. On average, international visitors spend £460 each, a substantial amount of money to the economies of developing countries and the businesses it supports.

There are obvious examples of successful tourism, such as Kenya and South Africa, but countries such as Mozambique are also making great strides, with international tourist arrivals growing by 284% between 2005 and 2010. Ensuring that tourism is sustainable is a key way to do that, by tying economic growth to environmental and wildlife protection.

Goal 15 is that we:

“Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, and halt or reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss.”

The goal is that by 2020 Governments integrate ecosystem and biodiversity values into national and local planning, development processes, poverty reduction strategies and accounts. Action to end the cruel poaching and trafficking of protected species and address the demand for and supply of illegal wildlife products is urgently needed. If the world loses endangered animals such as rhinos, elephants, tigers, silverback gorillas, and even lions, tourism opportunities will be much more limited. At the moment, many people travel to see these magnificent animals, spending money and creating much employment for the local people.

We need to increase the capacity of local communities to pursue sustainable livelihood opportunities, ensuring that economic growth is not to the detriment of natural ecosystems and wildlife. Interweaving protection of the environment and biodiversity into the new sustainable development goals is the right thing to do economically and for the future of the planet, with almost universal agreement that doing it now will save the higher costs of trying to do it at a later date.

Making this work requires the last principle of the new goals as they stand: partnership. It will take global support to combat poaching and the trafficking of protected species, and in an ecologically interlinked world, nations will need to work together to mobilise and increase financial resources to conserve and sustainably use biodiversity and ecosystems. It will also require partnerships between Governments, civil society organisations and non-governmental organisations, and, importantly, the inclusion of the people on the ground. It is often said that the millennium development goal where the least progress was made was delivering partnerships. If that fails to happen again, it will be the world’s poor, once again, who suffer most.

Sub-Saharan Africa (Corruption and the Economy)

Pauline Latham Excerpts

Wednesday 1st July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Phillips]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and he is absolutely right. I shall come on to his point in due course.

Corruption in the developing world has been a hidden problem for too long, though it is now beginning to be brought home to us by the constant threat to our security and by an untrammelled immigration that sees fires set at the entrance to the channel tunnel in France. It is something that requires effort from every Government across the world to challenge, but it is also something that I fear is still too far down the political agenda across the world to be effectively tackled.

Nothing much is changing in terms of advancing the anti-corruption agenda. On 9 December 2013, on international anti-corruption day, the UN Secretary-General pointed out that

“corruption suppresses economic growth by driving up costs, and undermines the sustainable management of the environment and natural resources. It breaches fundamental human rights, exacerbates poverty and increases inequality by diverting funds from health care, education and other essential services. The malignant effects of corruption are felt by billions of people everywhere.”

[Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

Does my hon. and learned Friend agree that until all Governments have zero tolerance of corruption, they will never be able to invest what they need to invest in health and education, as he said? They should take a leaf out of Rwanda’s book, as that is what it has done, and it is investing consistently, which other countries are not.

[Stephen Phillips]

My hon. Friend is right. I cannot speak specifically about Rwanda, but unless and until all countries bear down on corruption, this will be a problem that endures.

Very little progress has been made since the Secretary-General made those remarks two years ago. Still the procurement managers sit in their air-conditioned offices marking the passage of time on their gold Rolexes; still corporate interests buy their way out of laws designed to protect the environment and to ensure that they pay proper amounts of taxation; still wealthy individuals and businesses ease their passage through difficult lawsuits by ensuring that the judiciary across Africa knows which side is more likely to pay more for the “right” result.

Let us take but one area. In its report “Making a Killing”, published this year, Save the Children estimated that the lost tax revenues to developing countries in sub-Saharan Africa due to illicit financial flows was in the order of $15 billion—a figure that dwarfs this country’s annual aid budget and would pay for 1.8 million healthcare workers. That is a loss of revenue to sub-Saharan Africa in just one area, which is largely made possible by a corruption that allows the maintaining of tax laws and treaties that favour rich corporations which are prepared to bribe Governments and parliamentarians to secure their favoured status. The report fails to take account of perhaps even larger revenues that are lost because a blind eye is turned—once it has been paid for—to direct tax evasion. That is morally wrong. It sustains endemic poverty, and, as I have said, it threatens our own security.

We are not without an international framework within which to deal with the issue. In 2003, the United Nations opened for signature the international anti-corruption convention, which the majority of countries in the world have now ratified. It established some common standards in relation to, for example, criminalisation and law enforcement in chapter III, and international co-operation in chapter IV. However, although monitoring finally began in about 2010, it has been patchy and inconsistent. It also suffers from the major failing that review takes place principally “in region”, thus opening up a whole new field to corruption as non-compliant countries with mutual interests are able to score one another for compliance. One issue that the Minister could usefully discuss with his counterparts in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is how the convention can be updated to ensure proper monitoring.

I believe that the OECD anti-bribery convention has been ratified by only 41 countries. What efforts are the Government making to ensure not only that it is more broadly adopted, but that it is actually enforced by those who have signed it? In its most recent report on the implementation of the convention in 2015, Transparency International found that there was “little or no enforcement” of it in many states, including the Republic of Ireland. There was “active enforcement” only in the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany and Switzerland.

The conventions are, however, only part of the solution. They assist in establishing common international standards, but without enforcement—or, for that matter, the institutions that are necessary to ensure enforcement—they are essentially meaningless.

Sustainable Development Goals

Pauline Latham Excerpts

Wednesday 28th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Anas Sarwar]

Well, we should also highlight the fact that more Labour MPs voted in favour of the Bill than MPs from every other party combined.

With crucial negotiations and agreements coming up, I want the next Government to be drivers, not passengers. The new sustainable development goals must go faster to eliminate extreme poverty and focus on tackling inequality, as mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley). To add to that, we would prioritise universal health coverage, human rights for all, including women, children and the disabled, and the effects of climate change.

Access to health care should be based on a person’s need, not their ability to pay. It should be a right, not a privilege. That is why, unlike the Government, we will support a stand-alone goal on universal health coverage. Universal health coverage does not just help improve health outcomes, it would help reduce inequality and stop 100 million people a year from falling into poverty. I pay tribute to two Conservative Members who spoke passionately about causes that are dear to them. The right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) has shown a tremendous commitment to the fight against tuberculosis and raised the important point of multi-drug resistance. Universal health coverage could be an important element of that fight in the future. I had the privilege of serving on the International Development Committee with the hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) for almost 18 months, and he spoke of his commitment to the issue of malaria, and the work done by the last Government and this to tackle it. I know first hand, from our conversations and from serving on the Committee, of the good work that he does. I am sure that that will have the support of both sides of the House and, I hope, the next Labour Government.

Negotiations on universal health coverage are also about resilience to humanitarian disasters or outbreaks of disease, and we have already heard about the difference that can make. Nigeria, which has invested strongly in building its health systems, was able to contain and beat the Ebola virus, but Sierra Leone—let us remember that the Government cut support for that country—has struggled to cope, resulting in loss of life and the need for even greater support from the Government and the international community.

On the issue of Ebola, I wish to put on record again, on behalf of both sides of the House, our thanks to and appreciation of Pauline Cafferkey and all those from the United Kingdom who volunteer to go and help in the fight against Ebola. Pauline is an example of a real hero in our community, and I am sure that we all want to send her our best wishes as she recovers from Ebola and returns home to Rutherglen in Scotland.

I echo the comments made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr Clarke), who rightly paid tribute to our tremendous staff at the Department for International Development. They are heroes in their own right, struggling and fighting to make a difference to people’s lives across the world.

[Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman mentioned that we had cut aid to Sierra Leone. We have spent more money on health in Sierra Leone in every year of this Parliament than the previous Government. Where is he getting his figures from? It is duff information.

[Anas Sarwar]

It is good to see the hon. Lady taking part in the debate. She was not here earlier when we were discussing that very important issue. She may want to refer to the House of Commons Library and to a Westminster Hall debate with the Minister of State, Department for International Development, the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Mr Swayne) on this important issue. In that debate, the Minister admitted he did not know how much money the Government were spending in Sierra Leone. He also said he would go away and find out. I am still waiting for an answer.

Another point raised with the Minister in that debate was how we recruit from developing countries to our NHS. The Minister said he would investigate and come back on that. I would be interested to hear the result of that investigation. There is a sad irony in the UK recruiting one in four doctors trained in Sierra Leone into our NHS, when it has an acute need itself. Our NHS—thought of, created and saved by Labour—is the envy of the world. The previous debate is proof enough of this Government’s shoddy commitment to it and its values. That is why only Labour can be trusted to make the case for universal health coverage at home and abroad.

Another priority is to put women and girls at the heart of the sustainable development goals. We would like gender equality, access to education, clamping down and taking action against female genital mutilation, and making sure every child is protected from slavery or abuse to be included.

On private sector development, Labour agrees that a thriving and free private sector is vital to the elimination of poverty, but it cannot be based on the ideology of trickle-down economics. Labour believes the most sustainable and dignified route out of poverty is work. We must ensure that that also means decent pay, fair conditions and the freedom to join a trade union. That is why we will reverse the Government’s decision to slash funding to the International Labour Organisation. DFID’s spending on private sector development in 2011-12 was £549 million. That now sits at £1.8 billion—a fifth of DFID’s budget.

At the same time, we have seen Ministers completely fail to ensure value for money or transparency, a point raised by my hon. Friends the Members for East Lothian (Fiona O'Donnell) and for Llanelli (Nia Griffith). It is very difficult to establish what DFID is spending that money on. It is channelled through private bodies such as the Private Infrastructure Development Group, a multilateral organisation that is considerably less transparent. Government Members may criticise Labour’s approach, but the National Audit Office and the Government’s own Independent Commission for Aid Impact warn that oversight of this funding is inadequate and risks wasting taxpayers’ money. We await the Public Accounts Committee report tomorrow.

It is completely unacceptable that any Government Minister can fail to answer basic questions on how we spend £2 billion of taxpayers’ money. It is not just the Government who have a responsibility, but companies too. It is an absolute scandal that every year three times as much is lost in tax revenues to developing countries than the global aid budget combined. That is why we must make tackling tax avoidance a priority at home and abroad. We must look at supply chains adopting the same principles we apply in this country.

My hon. Friends the Members for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) and for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty), and many other colleagues, raised the issue of climate change. Labour will, unlike this Government, put the fight against climate change front and centre of international agreements. We will use the G8 in Germany to push for climate change to be a permanent standing item at the UN Security Council. It will be on the agenda of every meeting with world leaders here in the UK. Leading on the sustainable development goals; leading on climate change; leading on private sector development; leading on universal health coverage; and leading right around the world. That is the leadership this country needs.