International Disaster Relief

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Tuesday 6th February 2018 Westminster Hall

On resuming—

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

The sitting is resumed, and I believe the SNP spokesman has three minutes to go.

[Chris Law]

Thank you, Mr Hollobone. I must say that it is also a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, since I see the Chair has changed in the past few minutes.

I was coming to my conclusion, but I will reiterate the point I was making about the notion of the national interest, which is that it does not mean very much. I have to reflect on what the hon. Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd) called the moral interest, because it is in all of our interests to serve the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable internationally.

I cannot emphasise enough that the delivery of aid must remain focused on ending extreme poverty and supporting a fairer, more sustainable future for all. Although that sounds obvious, it needs to be reiterated time and again. It is in all of our interests. It is a promise we made to the world’s poorest and most vulnerable, and that is what the UK taxpayer has the right to expect.

It is also critical to ensure that all our aid is high-impact, transparent and accountable and that it delivers real change for people living in poverty, no matter which Department it comes from. That is why I urge the Minister to commit to investing more funding to resilience and recovery for those living in the fragile nations most at risk of climate-related extreme events and economic and social disasters. Lastly, I urge him to channel more funding as directly as possible through local and national actors on the ground in the affected area, working with local communities and organisations.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

Because of the votes, the timings of this debate have changed. The debate now finishes no later than 4.26 pm.

[Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone.

This is my first effort responding as a member of Labour’s Front Bench, and I am delighted to do so. It is perhaps a slight shame that today, of all days, it has been an all-male debate, but I am sure that the Minister and I can both say that our Departments are finely led by female colleagues. It gives me great pleasure to follow in the footsteps of distinguished colleagues, and even more to have managed to be here on time, which hopefully forestalls any demands for me to follow in the footsteps of Lord Bates—although I am glad to say that he has not been asked to resign as Minister of State for being 60 seconds or so late to the Dispatch Box. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods), who served admirably in the shadow role in DFID.

I am rapidly learning that perspective is important in politics, as is the ability to recognise when Government Departments are doing a good job, even if their Ministers are sometimes late. I am pleased to commend DFID on the hugely important work it does—work that is recognised and appreciated by the United Nations, among others. I congratulate the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie) on securing this important debate, and pay tribute to all hon. Members who have taken part. There have been some fine contributions, not least on my own side, from the Chair of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend and neighbour the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), and from my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd).

When it comes to international disaster relief, the UK continues to set an enviable example, although of course we could always do more. The Organisation for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs commends Britain on the commitments it made following the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul. In common with us, OCHA would like to know whether the UK Government will continue to report to the platform for action, commitments and transformation on how it is meeting those commitments.

The sheer scale of the global humanitarian crisis risks making us all feel like powerless bystanders. In recent weeks, upward of one quarter of a million people have fled their homes in north-west Syria, the largest single exodus in a savage civil war that has lasted seven years—taking place, by the way, at a time when we are being told that the Syrian civil war is coming nearer to its end. This year’s United Nations response plan for Yemen describes the war-torn country as

“the worst man-made humanitarian crisis”

in the world, with more than 22 million people—around three quarters of the total population—in need of help.

Since the escalation of violence in March 2015, when conflict broke out, Yemen, already the poorest country in the region, has been left on the verge of a humanitarian collapse. We know that in both Syria and Yemen, conflict has been intensely aggravated by the fact that those countries are being used as proxies by others to further other agendas. We know, too, that because of that the demands placed on those charged with delivering disaster relief have been unrelenting. It is important to name and praise all those who struggle daily with the tide of human misery caused by these wars with no end.

I will mention one unsung hero, who in so many ways personifies what is best about the often-maligned United Nations and its agencies. Over the past few years, it has been the voice of the UN humanitarian co-ordinator, Jamie McGoldrick, that has drawn the world’s attention most loudly and most often to Yemen’s plight. He felt that he had to, as journalists had been banned from the country. He has just stepped down, having overseen one of the most difficult and challenging aid operations in the world. When asked how it felt to deliver aid to an increasingly desperate population in Yemen, Jamie McGoldrick said that there is

“no point in getting angry, there’s no point in getting frustrated, the point is to get smart.”

It is high time that we in this place got smart. We owe it to people like Jamie McGoldrick and to the tens of thousands that he and his colleagues struggle to care for. Being smart means that we simply cannot tolerate a situation where the British Government sanction arms sales to Saudi Arabia, whose aerial bombardment of Yemen has caused so much death and destruction, while salving our collective conscience by asking people like Jamie McGoldrick to ensure that, if possible, traumatised women and children are pulled out of the rubble. The situation is simply not acceptable, nor is it sustainable.

In response to the points raised by the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine, I will say that the UK Navy has played an important role in international disaster relief, for example in the Caribbean hurricanes and the UK’s response to the Ebola crisis in Sierra Leone. Our defence forces can and should contribute to humanitarian relief, but I want to exercise a note of caution. Whenever we spend our aid budget, it must be about getting the biggest bang for our buck for the world’s poorest. The priority must always be poverty reduction and humanitarian relief, in line with internationally agreed rules. Where the armed forces can offer real added value and where they are explicitly doing humanitarian work, then it is an option worth exploring further.

We also need to get smart by standing up to those we believe we have a special relationship with, especially when they slash funding to organisations such as the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the main relief lifeline for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. Their displacement from their homeland has continued, in some cases, for over half a century. If we are to use our influence to ensure that funding mechanisms are found for the longer term and for development financing for refugee countries, why are we leaving it to other countries to fill the funding gap left by the Trump Administration?

Returning to the World Humanitarian Summit of 2016, I would ask the Minister what progress his Department is making to ensure that at least 25% of humanitarian funding is delivered as directly as possible to local and national actors by 2020. I also ask whether the UK is increasing the proportion of aid spent on disaster risk reduction from 0.4% to 0.5% on the timelines laid out.

Today, the world is facing the largest humanitarian crisis since 1945, with 20 million people at risk of starvation as a result of drought and conflict in South Sudan, Somalia, Yemen and Nigeria alone. The scale of suffering is almost unimaginable and the task of reversing this tide of human misery so enormous that the temptation to simply slink away and pretend nothing is happening is too much. We can begin by at least recognising where we are getting it right and by turning our attention to what more we can do as one of the richest nations on earth.

We can also start by comprehending that a second world war that left millions dead and even more without shelter gave rise not only to the United Nations, but to a generation of people prepared to put their collective shoulder to the wheel to ensure that such conflict never happened again. With far fewer resources, and in a Europe and Asia whose cities had been flattened, that generation not only rebuilt, but strove for a better society—one without conflict. We still have much more to do to put an end to the conflict that is fuelling so much human misery today.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

After that glittering debut, I will ask the Minister to conclude his remarks no later than 4.23 pm, to allow Mr Bowie three minutes to sum up at the end.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Bowie]

I am coming to my hon. Friend.

I would like to concentrate on three points that were made. The first, which was made by quite a few hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Dundee West, was the huge humanitarian crisis that we face now. It is probably the biggest that we have faced since 1945 and responding to it presents challenges for every Government. The second point was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Strangford, who must have Aberdeenshire blood in him somewhere given how strongly he wants to account for every grain of rice that is being sent out by DFID.

I will end on the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Stephen Kerr) regarding the incredible generosity of the British people. Every year, they take our collective breath away with the amount of money and time that they are willing to give in order to send money overseas whenever crises occur. My hon. Friend pointed out that, last year alone, £97 million was donated by the British people for crises overseas and charitable works. It is on that point that I end the debate. I thank everyone very much for contributing to what has been a genuinely very good-natured and consensual debate.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the UK contribution to international disaster relief.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

Will those who inexplicably are not staying for the next debate, on train services between Telford and Birmingham, please leave quickly and quietly?