Covid-19: International Response

Preet Kaur Gill Excerpts

Wednesday 6th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op) [V]]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of her statement. I would also like to offer my thanks to all those workers, both in the UK and across the world, who are on the frontline during this pandemic. In particular, I thank the women, who make up more than 70% of the global health workforce and provide unpaid and underpaid care in communities around the world.

Wherever we look, the virus has hit the poorest and most vulnerable hardest and has exacerbated existing inequalities. I am sure the Secretary of State will agree that ensuring that we have a strong, independent DFID is vital to overcoming the immediate emergency of the coronavirus while continuing to tackle global poverty, inequality and the climate crisis.

I support the Secretary of State’s commitment to the pledging event on Monday, which was hosted by the European Union and other partners. I welcome the UK’s commitment of £388 million. Can she tell the House how much of that is new, additional money? Without global collaboration, there is a risk of a scramble between countries, huge price hikes and restrictions on supply, which will all come at the expense of people’s lives. What steps is she taking to secure buy-in from those who did not attend the event and those who did not contribute, such as the United States and China?

Following the comments by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care about an upside of being first to discover a vaccine, has the International Development Secretary explained to him that creating division and competition between nations will cost lives? Will she also detail the concrete conditions that the Government are attaching to public money going to researching and manufacturing tests, vaccines and medical tools for covid-19, so that those who need access to that vital equipment and medicine are able to access it as quickly as possible wherever they are in the world?

I would also like to take this opportunity to raise the issue of shipments and distribution. Since the week of 22 March, UNICEF has reported a 70% to 80% reduction in planned vaccine shipments. With the huge increase in the cost of flights to deliver goods, what steps is the Secretary of State taking to get medical supplies to countries that are running out and to stop airline companies profiteering from the global pandemic?

I welcome the steps that the International Monetary Fund and the G20 have taken so far on debt relief. The Jubilee Debt Campaign estimates that bonds and other private external debt payments for 77 of the poorest countries will total at least $9.4 billion from May to December 2020. With the UK playing its part as a key jurisdiction for international debt contracts, can the Secretary of State explain what legislative options she is exploring to protect countries from being crippled by private debt?

Coronavirus is not just a health emergency; it is an economic and social one too. These secondary impacts of the coronavirus risk doing untold damage to people’s lives. We already see large-scale food insecurity, increases in deaths due to other health problems such as HIV and malaria, and clampdowns on human rights. The Secretary of State mentioned pivoting resources towards covid-19. Does she agree that diverting resources risks a spike in problems in other areas, as we have already seen in the United Kingdom?

Finally, as we saw during the Ebola outbreak, trusted organisations rooted in communities will be crucial to delivering accurate public health messaging and WASH—water, sanitation and hygiene—projects which save lives. There is no substitute for the unique experiences, relationships and specialisms of local and national civil society organisations. They will be vital to tackling the global pandemic. The latest Bond survey found that 52% of small NGOs have had to cut back on programming working across the global south, removing the lifesaving work they do. I am concerned by how little UK aid has gone to local organisations. Will the Secretary of State ensure that any new plan her Department is involved in, including any revised UN global humanitarian response plan, contains a genuine commitment to scaling up a locally led approach, including women and girls’ rights organisations, large and small INGOs, faith groups and trade unions? As ever, I am here to support and assist.

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

I thank the hon. Lady for her questions. I will do my best to answer them all in turn.

On funding allocation, we have so far committed £276 million for resilience, with multinational organisations and UN appeals alongside the International Red Cross and the Unilever project. Some £380 million is focused on the vaccine, drugs and therapeutics space through CEPI, FIND—the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics—Wellcome and so on, alongside the economic response with the IMF commitment of £150 million and the Gavi investment, which will all be part of the delivery of the vaccine.

I was not aware of the UNICEF statistics on vaccine treatment numbers that the hon. Lady raised, so I will ask my officials to get in touch with her and look closely at that. I thank her for raising that issue with me today.

The event on Monday was co-ordinated by the EU and co-hosted by a number of leaders, including our own Prime Minister. It was a coalition of the willing: a gathering together of those, mostly European, nations who wanted to show their support and solidarity on the international front. We are working closely with the USA on vaccines and more widely on delivery. That continues separately. The USA’s commitment is enormous, and not just internally. I was talking with the new United States Agency for International Development chief, John Barsa earlier in the week about how they are going to focus in the medium term on the substantial commitment the US always makes to supporting vulnerable countries. That will be an ongoing conversation and I think the commitment from USAID is unstinting in that space.

The hon. Lady raised the very important issue of how the conditions go with the funding we put in. That is why we have invested our funds through CEPI and FIND. Both organisations put their money into appropriate projects with an understanding and a contractual relationship that ensures that those scientific programmes will then be accessible to all. It is a really important and secure way—if that is the right way to describe it—of ensuring that UK taxpayers’ money really does reach vulnerable countries when the technologies are discovered.

I completely agree with the hon. Lady on food insecurity. This is absolutely a critical question that we must not lose sight of as we are fighting this disease in the short term. The impact on the most vulnerable countries of food insecurity has not gone away. The threat of locust plagues in just one part of the globe is one critical function we need to get on top of. We are starting to see, as everyone looks up from their own domestic challenges, the great challenge that we have. If we do not support tackling all the other critical preventable death areas, we will find that we cannot tackle this disease. As I said earlier, no one is safe until we are all safe.

Sustainable Development Goals

Preet Kaur Gill Excerpts

Tuesday 11th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am delighted to join the debate and thank all Members who contributed. The hon. Member for Dundee West (Chris Law) made the excellent point that the SDGs should be a comprehensive blueprint for all Departments. He raised the UN special rapporteur’s report on poverty in the UK and stated that the Government are in denial of the facts. He quoted Richard Curtis, who I commend for his work in raising the profile of the SDGs, and gave a clear message that whoever becomes Prime Minister needs to give proper leadership to the SDGs across the Government.

My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), who is the Chair of the International Development Committee, must be commended for the work he has done, particularly on the SDGs. He made an excellent speech in which he spoke of the evidence his Committee has taken, righty raising a lack of understanding of the SDGs across Whitehall. He made many important points, particularly on how the Government will bring the VNR back home, especially into the public consciousness.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) focused on a number of SDGs. She cited the work of Tearfund on plastic pollution and the impact it will have on achieving the SDGs. She made the important point that we spend only 0.93% of ODA on waste management in developing countries, which is really a public health concern.

The hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) spoke of the work the Scottish Government are doing on SDGs. He cited Scotland’s partnership work with Malawi, evidencing how civil society can be engaged in delivering the SDGs.

Since I joined the shadow DFID team, I have championed the SDGs at every opportunity. Last year, I went to New York as part of Global Goals Week, and I look forward to returning to New York this year to attend the high-level meetings where the UK’s voluntary national review will be presented. Given that engagement, I was pleased to hear the Leader of the House announce last week that we would have a specific debate on the voluntary national review process. Needless to say, I was somewhat perplexed to see the scope of the debate changed in the Order Paper to remove any reference to the review. It is vital that we take it seriously. We must honour the SDG agenda that we signed up to as a country, and that means applying all 17 goals to both our international and domestic work and being honest about where we can improve.

Let me echo what has already been said in this debate regarding the need for a whole Government approach to achieve the SDGs. On a global level, that means we must have policy coherence so that the actions of one Department do not undermine the work of others. In the UK, local government and local councils matter. We cannot deliver the SDGs domestically without them.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, just like in 1992 when after the Earth summit every local council produced a local agenda 21, the Government should be mandating local councils to produce and fulfil local SDGs? I think that councils would be willing to take that opportunity if the call went out from the heart of Government.

[Preet Kaur Gill]

I thank my hon. Friend for that important contribution, which I fully endorse. I hope that the Government will take that on board.

As I was saying, local government and local councils matter. That is why last year I worked with Birmingham City Council, my local council, to approve a motion on the sustainable development goals, with cross-party support. It was the first council to agree formally to play its part to achieve those important goals. I hope that other councils across the country will follow Birmingham’s lead and adopt their own motions, and I hope the Minister will join me in encouraging Members from across the House to support similar motions in their constituencies.

Will the Minister also agree to speak to colleagues in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to ensure that councils and communities across the UK are playing their part? I am concerned about the leadership role that DFID appears to be playing in a programme that should be both global and domestic. DFID is specifically tasked with addressing poverty overseas. Its limited resources should not be diverted to tackling issues in the UK that are the specific responsibility of other Departments.

Those concerns were recently raised by the International Development Committee, which said:

“Cross-government engagement with the SDGs—up to this point—has been woefully insufficient. Outside of DFID there is still very limited knowledge of the Goals amongst Whitehall officials.”

The Committee went on to say that it was

“not convinced that DFID should be leading on the coordination of the VNR”.

I agree with its comments. I should like the entire Government to take the SDGs far more seriously. According to analysis by Saferworld, only three of 76 conflict, stability and security fund programme summaries refer publicly to the 2030 agenda and SDGs as guidance for context analysis or programme direction.

Will the Minister update the House on whether the proposed departmental champions have now all been appointed? Will she clarify what their role will be and what meaningful reporting process they will follow to ensure that the UK does deliver on these important goals? Will she—this is a related question—give concrete assurances that the voluntary national review of the UK’s progress towards achieving the goals domestically will not take any time or resources away from the Department’s international work to eradicate extreme poverty overseas?

I have heard concerns from a number of NGOs and civil society groups that feel that their involvement in the review process has been chaotic, disorganised and last minute. Given that the original deadline for the report’s submission to the UN is this Friday—a deadline that was confirmed in response to one of my recent written questions—civil society groups will be rightly alarmed that they will not have had a proper chance to feed back on the VNR before it is submitted. What are the Government doing to ensure that there is meaningful engagement with those groups? Will the Minister clarify how the input sought from the recent consultations will feed into the final review, and will she give a commitment to seek Government time for a debate following the submission of the VNR, so that we can discuss the content in greater detail?

We cannot afford to fail to meet the SDG targets. The challenges that we face are vast. Across the world, one in nine people still goes hungry, one in five children lives in conflict, 40 million people are displaced from their homes, and the world is facing an ecological breakdown. The world may be at its wealthiest overall, but inequality is at its highest: 26 people now own the same wealth as 50% of all humanity—3.8 billion people.

That is symptomatic of a global economy that is rigged in favour of the few at the expense of the many and a system that accumulates private wealth and power in the hands of a few individuals at the expense of public goods.

As we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden), the picture in the UK is bleak as well. More and more children live in poor households, and according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, an unacceptable 7% rise in child poverty is likely between 2015 and 2022.

It is right that we have had time today to debate the UK’s own performance against the sustainable development goals and the voluntary national review. I trust that we will respect the truly universal nature of the SDGs, so that we see a far greater focus on how we achieve them both globally and here in the UK, as that will give us a global blueprint for dignity, peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and in the future.