Oral Answers to Questions

Preet Kaur Gill Excerpts

Tuesday 6th September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister, Preet Kaur Gill.

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

Earlier this summer, it was reported that the Treasury had blocked aid payments for the duration of the summer while the Conservative leadership contest ran. I immediately wrote to the Chancellor and Foreign Secretary, asking what that would mean for the world’s poorest and most vulnerable, and requesting an urgent response; 42 days later, I have heard nothing back. This at a time when someone reportedly dies every 48 seconds in the horn of Africa hunger crisis. By my estimation, that means that more than 75,000 may have died. Last night the World Food Programme issued a stark warning, saying that famine is “imminent” and Somalia has run out of time. Can I please finally get some answers today, and seek the Minister’s reassurance that the new Foreign Secretary will stop the block on aid payments as an urgent priority?

[Vicky Ford]

The UK remains one of the largest donors of official development assistance in the world. In Somalia in particular, the situation is tragic. We have been leading the way with our aid and to bring in other donors. The hon. Member knows that I announced further advancements of funding into Somalia from the UK just last week. We continue to prioritise Somalia, but it is important that we bring in other donors, which is why we have worked with the World Bank, encouraging it to accelerate the $30 billion that it is sending out across the world into the horn of Africa, which it is now doing.

Strategy for International Development

Preet Kaur Gill Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2022 Commons Chamber

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

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion)—the Chair of the International Development Committee—and the Backbench Business Committee for securing this important debate. My hon. Friend and the Committee she chairs do remarkable work on behalf of this House to hold the Government to account, however challenging that has been over the past two years. I also thank all hon. Members who supported the application and the many who spoke powerfully during the debate and made important points.

My hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham said that the Government’s priority is trade, not reducing poverty, and she said that they must get the foundations right. The right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), a previous Secretary of State, stated that when British leadership was needed the most, the Government chose the worst possible time to cut the aid budget. He said that everyone has recognised the merger with the FCO as a disaster, and of course I agree with him. I thank him for all his work and for speaking up for the world’s poorest. Like many Members, he also made a strong point on the different skillsets between DFID and diplomatic staff.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), another former Secretary of State, knows the issues well and emphasised that the Prime Minister’s decision to abolish DFID, breaking his word, was a mistake. He rightly asked who Samantha Power will call to discuss development, and said that in a world with uncertainty, Britain must be seen as an honest, trusted partner and that that harm must be undone.

The hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire (Mrs Latham) spoke about the role of the International Development Committee in ensuring that taxpayers get value for money. The hon. Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin), who was also previously a Minister in DFID, made strong arguments against the cuts.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) made a passionate speech, stating that the heart of the debate is the fact that

“when the world needed us to step up, we stepped back”,

that the crisis of food fragility is not going to sort itself out and that the aid cut only makes things worse. On the SDRs, he exposed the incompetence across Government, saying that they clearly have no grip on the issue.

My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas), a former Minister, spoke passionately about the moral case and what a mistake it had been to axe the Department. I thank him for all his excellent work. He also made an important point about the different skillsets and the fact that the new administration must listen to those with experience, and called on Government to reverse the cuts and the merger.

The hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) spoke passionately about the impact of cuts and the vandalism of the merger of DFID. It was a pleasure to hear the maiden speech of the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Richard Foord). I wish him the very best; I thank him for making his maiden speech in this important debate and I look forward to working with him.

My hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) campaigned for the 0.7% target for development spending, a cause that she said was cross-party and a proud moment for Britain. She has expertise in this area and is a champion for development because she knows at first hand that it works. My friend the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who always speaks in these important debates, made an impassioned speech on the importance of freedom of religion or belief, saying that it is a human right.

We have heard much today about the appalling human cost of the aid cuts over the past two years. We have heard how 7.1 million children—more than half the child population of the UK—lost out on their education; how 72 million people missed out on expected treatment for neglected tropical diseases; how, in the middle of a pandemic, this Government unconscionably pulled funding for research, health programmes and hand-washing; and how, just months before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, this Government cut £350 million from their conflict, stability and security fund and conflict prevention work.

Labour has been calling over the past year for the international development strategy to be published, because we know it was an important chance to set out how Britain will rise to the global challenges of the next decades. It was a chance for the Foreign Secretary to reset after the damage of the past two years and rebuild.

We live in unprecedented times, and the need for Britain to return to the international stage could not be greater. The global food security crisis is growing fast, putting millions more at risk of famine. Already, in the Horn of Africa, aid agencies estimate that one person is dying every 48 seconds. The UN now reports that over 100 million people—1% of the global population—are on the move, displaced from their homes. Even as the extreme wealth of a handful of individuals has soared during the pandemic, 263 million more people will crash into extreme poverty this year, making a mockery of the notion that wealth trickles down. From the Sahel to California and the Pacific, the planet is on fire, and that needs an unprecedented response. The British public have played their part, whether by helping neighbours through covid or by opening their wallets and their homes for Ukrainian refugees. Civil servants at FCDO have played their part, working all hours to keep life-saving programmes afloat, even if their reward is a plan to reduce their number by up to 40%.

We needed this Government to play their part and come forward with a serious plan. That is why, prior to the strategy’s publication, I set out five basic tests that would allow the Opposition to support the Government. First, after the shutdown of DFID, is the strategy serious about restoring Britain’s development expertise? Secondly, would it provide the resources needed and return the UK to 0.7%? Thirdly, is it serious about targeting aid to those most in need? Fourthly, given the war, pandemic and climate emergency we face, would it protect climate, health and conflict as priorities? Finally, would it make the long-term, positive case for development, because we know it works? These are simple and reasonable tests. They are not complicated or designed to trip the Government up. They are, I hope, tests that many Conservative Members and Members in all parts of the House would want to see met. The sad truth is that this strategy does not meet a single one of these most basic tests.

Let us be generous and first look at the Government’s plan on their own terms. They say that they want to boost British investment. Presumably that is why last year British International Investment, the Government’s development finance arm, invested almost £600 million in DP World, the Dubai-owned parent company of P&O Ferries, famous for its so-called efficiencies. It was the biggest investment in BII’s 73-year history, and more than three times our entire bilateral aid last year to the Americas, Europe and the Pacific combined. I have written to the Government about this before, but I ask again: what assurances can the Minister now provide that ODA funds that are required by law to be spent on poverty reduction are not subsidising a race to the bottom for workers in Britain and abroad? Under the new strategy, will we see more or fewer investments of this kind?

The Government say that they want to prioritise humanitarian assistance. That is quite right, with war in Ukraine, famine in east Africa and economic collapse in Afghanistan, but if this is a top priority for the UK, why exactly did the Government cut £787 million—over half their humanitarian funding—last year, and why, in the new strategy, do the Government commit only to spending £3 billion over the next three years? On average, that will be a cut of a third from the pre-pandemic level.

The Government say that helping women and girls is a priority. The FCDO’s own equalities assessment warned last year that aid cuts would affect millions of women and girls, but the Government went ahead anyway, leaving what charities say is a £1.9 billion gap. Despite the Government’s manifesto promise to educate more girls, the ONE Campaign has calculated that, in practice, 3.7 million girls lost out on an education because of this Prime Minister’s decision to cut aid. I welcome the fact that the Foreign Secretary has promised to restore funding levels for women and girls to pre-pandemic levels this year, but does the Minister accept that stand-alone funding for women and girls will mean little if other programmes giving them access to health, education and nutrition continue to be cut?

On the promise of a new Indo-Pacific tilt, the new strategy says nothing about how it will reverse the £506 million—32%—cuts made to the region in 2021. The strategy declares that the UK will

“sustain its commitment to Africa”,

but says nothing about how it will reverse the cuts of £864 million, or 39%, made to the region in 2021.

The strategy promises that multilaterals will “remain essential partners”. Global crises demand global solutions, so in an increasingly multipolar world, what could be more important? In practice, however, bilateral spending will account for 75% of the pot by 2025. That means that hundreds of millions more pounds will be cut in the coming months from the already stretched budgets of the UN and other multilateral agencies. It will mean that programmes are ended and life-changing services for the world’s poorest terminated.

There is a common thread: the strategy has many warm words and promises much, but until this Government restore the UK’s 0.7% commitment, it simply will not be able to deliver on these priorities. Even on its own terms, the strategy cannot succeed. Without money behind it, the strategy is barely worth the paper it is written on.

Labour understands the importance of honouring the 0.7% pledge, and in government we would return to it. The Government say that they will return to 0.7% as soon as the fiscal situation allows and as soon as their tests have been met, but let us remember that it was on a temporary basis that one year ago, Members of this House voted by a narrow majority of just 35 to approve the cuts. Since the March 2022 spring statement, the tests are now expected to be met in 2023-24 rather than in 2024-25, so can the Minister confirm whether the Government will use their autumn Budget to set the timeline to return to 0.7%, instead of kicking the issue into the long grass? If not, may I kindly suggest that the Minister has a word with the new Chancellor, if he is still in post?

I have also received confirmation that the Business Secretary has returned £100 million of Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy international climate finance for 2022-23 to the Treasury, only months into the financial year. That is not an underspend, but a cut. In the integrated review, this Government said that climate was their No. 1 international priority, but we know that the cuts undermined our standing in negotiations in a crucial year at COP26, and developing countries can block agreements, which is in no one’s interest. A year after COP26, crops are failing across the Earth because of extreme heat, and millions of east Africans face famine. How is anyone meant to trust a word this Government say?

When it comes to our aid budget, the spirit is as important as the letter of the law. I know that many Members share my outrage at the use of accounting tricks to further reduce aid spending. For every spare vaccine that the Government have so far donated, they reportedly paid just £2.30, but they are charging £4.30 to the aid budget, which means that £100 million less will, in practice, be spent on crises in such places as Afghanistan, Yemen and Tigray. Given that the Government are yet to share and cost the remaining 77 million vaccines they promised, it could mean another £330 million being charged to the aid budget, in turn reducing ODA spending elsewhere. Can the Minister confirm today that future vaccine donations will be counted as additional to, rather than within, the 0.7% this year?

I have outlined at some length how the strategy fails on its own terms. That should be a real concern to Government Members, even where they agree with the Government’s priorities. This strategy will also fail because it also fundamentally is the wrong set of priorities to guide Britain’s international development policy over the coming decade. The Foreign Secretary writes in the foreword that the strategy is designed to help the UK take on what she calls “malign actors”. She says that she wants to offer an alternative to China’s belt and road initiative. That is why the strategy promises so much on investment in infrastructure and trade and why it abandons many of the UK’s priorities on poverty reduction and leaving no one behind, but it cannot be an either/or option.

It is true that we live in an increasingly multipolar world, with powers outside the G7 holding more cards than ever before. That is exactly why we need more bridge-building, not less. Britain must help to solve the world’s problems together with others, and not mimic China and go it alone—we need internationalism, not isolationism.

After he resigned recently, Moazzam Malik, the Foreign Secretary’s director general for Africa, spoke out powerfully about the choice at hand. He said that if development co-operation

“is used as a bargaining chip in a transactional geopolitical game, it will deliver poor value, weak impact, lead to scandals, and damage the UK’s credibility internationally.”

He went on:

“In all its work, FCDO must seek to smooth the path to a multi-polar world. That means new alliances…internationalism…and some deep humility.”

He concluded that the

“answer to a more contested world isn’t endless contestation but endless collaboration.”

That is the choice at hand on international development. We could be working with our partners, such as the US, at the G7 to negotiate the ambitious action needed on climate change, on vaccinating the world and on our global economic crisis. Instead, Samantha Power, the head of USAID, is reduced to calling the UK out publicly for cutting aid to sub-Saharan Africa in the middle of a global food crisis.

We could be leading the way as we once did, inspiring our partners to do development differently and to address the challenges of the coming decade, but let us be honest: Britain has been in retreat under this Government. Since shutting down our world-renowned international development partner, we do not even send Ministers to many high-level meetings at the World Bank, the UN and other institutions where we have a seat at the table. At a time when we should be shaping the global response to climate change, the pandemic and the global cost of living crisis, we are missing in action.

Our allies and partners see the chaos unfolding under this Prime Minister. The truth is that the Conservatives do not have what it takes to govern. Britain is missing from the world stage and stuck with a Government and a Prime Minister with no plan. The Opposition know, however, that global crises demand global solutions. Unilateral compassion is not enough: we must face outwards, broker international partnerships as equals, and resolve differences where they exist.

The choice is clear. The strategy does nothing to point the way to a better future. The Opposition stand for endless collaboration, not endless contestation. That is what makes us an internationalist party and that is why we will restore 0.7% and bring Britain back to the international table as a trusted partner when we enter government. There have long been many supporters of endless collaboration on both sides of the House; we heard powerful contributions from many of them today. Support for international development is not, and should not be, a party political issue. Together, we now have a real chance to pressure the new Government and the new Chancellor to bring back the 0.7% commitment with a clear timeline. I hope the Minister will work with me to do that. The lives and futures of millions of the world’s poorest people depend on it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Preet Kaur Gill Excerpts

Tuesday 21st June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

Through the International Criminal Court and the work we are doing on evidence collecting, we are working to make sure that the people committing those appalling crimes are held to account—not just in Ukraine, but more widely around the world. That is one of the key aims of the conference we are hosting in November. We are also increasing our budget for women and girls development aid, specifically to tackle sexual violence.

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

I place on the record my deepest respect for and thanks to our wonderful development and diplomatic staff, who do a fantastic job in very difficult circumstances. I visited Afghanistan this month, which was truly heart-rending. It appears that my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) and I are the only British MPs to have visited. I wonder why the Foreign Secretary has failed to visit, one year since the fall of Kabul. She knows that protecting development gains for women in Afghanistan is fundamental, given that millions are facing starvation, new restrictions and the loss of livelihoods.

Rather than hosting a summit, maybe the Foreign Secretary can explain what she meant when she said that

“we are restoring the aid budget for women and girls back to its previous levels and we are also restoring the humanitarian aid budget.”—[Official Report, 8 March 2022; Vol. 710, c. 191.]

Given that she failed to give an oral statement to the House on her 10-year international development strategy, will she make a statement to the House on when she plans to reverse the £1.9 billion in aid cuts to women’s programming that have proven so damaging to women and girls and to our reputation abroad—or is she following the Prime Minister’s lead of chasing headlines and not delivering?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I utterly condemn the appalling actions of the Taliban in reversing women’s and girls’ rights. We are doing all we can together with our international counterparts, including hosting a pledging conference to secure more support for the people of Afghanistan. As I have said, we are restoring the women’s and girls’ budget back to £745 million a year, and we are also ensuring that the humanitarian budget is greater so that we can tackle these issues around the world.

Oral Answers to Questions

Preet Kaur Gill Excerpts

Tuesday 26th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

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

Wars rage in Africa, the middle east and now Ukraine. There is a growing climate crisis, food prices are surging and 300,000 children face death by starvation in Somalia. Britain’s reputation is in tatters after two years of callous aid cuts, having shut down the world-renowned Department for International Development. It is clear that Britain needs a strategy for long-term development to stop lurching from crisis to crisis. Can the Secretary of State confirm today exactly when the new strategy will be published? Will it be backed with the funding, focus, ambition and expertise needed to make a lasting difference in the world?

[Elizabeth Truss]

We will be publishing our new development strategy this spring. There are some key elements to the strategy: first, we will restore the budget for women and girls and restore the budget for humanitarian aid. In the face of the appalling crisis in Ukraine, we have already committed £220 million of development funding, and we are one of the largest donors.

Oral Answers to Questions

Preet Kaur Gill Excerpts

Tuesday 8th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[James Cleverly]

We take attacks, or the threat of attacks, against nuclear facilities very seriously. Nuclear safeguarding remains a priority for this Government. I will not be drawn on the conditions of what might be defined as an attack on NATO, but nevertheless we have made it absolutely clear that NATO is a defensive organisation. It has never expanded by force or coercion. Our support to the Ukrainians is steadfast, but there is a clear dividing line between an attack on one of our good friends—Ukraine—and an attack on a NATO member state.

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

This International Women’s Day, hundreds of thousands of women are massed in the freezing cold at the borders of Ukraine, traumatised children in their arms, as they flee from Putin’s bloody, unprovoked war. Families have been separated, thousands of homes have been destroyed, and whole cities have been cut off from water, food, healthcare and other basic services. This is an evolving humanitarian situation, and the pace and scale of displacement is unlike anything we have seen in Europe for a generation. Some 2 million refugees have already fled the country, and millions more may cross the borders in the coming days and weeks.

Can the Minister tell us how much of the £220 million announced for humanitarian aid is actually in Ukraine or helping those who have fled its borders, and will he agree to provide us with a monthly breakdown of pledges against what has been disbursed? We have to act swiftly and we need to know what has been disbursed to date, so will the Minister tell us?

[James Cleverly]

As the hon. Lady says, this is a rapidly evolving situation. We have made recent announcements of humanitarian support, which are very significant—the largest in the world at this stage. We are more than happy to keep the House up to date with the disbursal of that humanitarian aid, and will do so through the normal means.

Oral Answers to Questions

Preet Kaur Gill Excerpts

Tuesday 25th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[James Cleverly]

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and the Home Office have maintained a close working relationship on such issues throughout this situation. Entitlement for foreign nationals to settle in the UK is ultimately a Home Office competency, but we will continue to work closely with the Home Office on such issues.

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

The situation facing millions of Afghans right now is unimaginable—starving families lining up for food; parents selling their babies and handing teenage daughters to the Taliban for cash; a mother so desperate that she sold her kidney and two of her daughters. Yet amid this horror the UK Government slashed the overseas aid budget, actually cut their support for Afghanistan from 2019 levels and, with only two months to go, disbursed only half of the humanitarian aid and assistance they promised. With 5 million children now on the brink of famine, will the Government show leadership by releasing the remainder of the pledge and taking the action proposed by the UN, Save the Children and former Prime Minister Gordon Brown by convening a humanitarian pledging conference to raise the £5 billion needed? Failure to act will cost more lives.

[James Cleverly]

I remind the hon. Lady that the £286 million that we have allocated to Afghanistan was put in place in the autumn, and we are still ensuring that the money is distributed. She made the important point that doing so quickly can sometimes come at the cost of doing so carefully. We want to ensure that our money reaches the people who are in need and is not diverted to support the Taliban regime. The UK remains at the forefront of international efforts to support Afghanistan, and I am proud of the work that my Department and the whole UK Government have done.

Global Vaccine Access

Preet Kaur Gill Excerpts

Thursday 13th January 2022 Westminster Hall

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

It is my pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Murray. I thank the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) for securing this hugely important debate. I think this issue will define this year, and the way this pandemic is remembered in history. I thank Members from across the House for their contributions.

From the very start of the pandemic, Labour and I have been clear that achieving global vaccine equity is a moral and economic imperative, yet the Government have failed time and again to answer the calls from our partners abroad, and the result is a catastrophic disparity between the countries that have and the countries that have not.

The facts speak for themselves. In the west, 70% of adults have received a vaccination, but many people in the world’s poorest areas are yet to receive a single dose. Nowhere is the covid divide clearer to see than in Africa, a continent in which immunisation rates in many countries are below even 1%, and three in four healthcare workers are yet to receive a single dose. The EU, the UK and the US received more doses in the last weeks of 2021 than African countries received all year.

From our own struggles with the pandemic, we know how desperately important it is to get jabs into arms, and of course we encourage everyone to get vaccinated; it is the way that we beat this virus. Yet why is it that when it comes to the rest of the world, last year we lagged behind the EU, the US, France, Germany, Italy and Canada in the number of doses donated to low and middle-income countries? I know that the new Foreign Secretary is perhaps a bit distracted at the moment with her own leadership ambitions, but seriously, is this global Britain? The world is right to wonder why this Government have fallen so far behind. Although Britain could be once counted upon to be a dependable and trusted leader on the world stage, our reputation has been tarnished by the Government’s failure to heed warnings about the virus mutating in less vaccinated regions and to take decisive action.

With the COVAX facility falling short of its pledges last year by over a billion doses and revising down its forecast for 2021-22 by 25%, as well as revelations that many vaccine producers not only failed to prioritise deliveries to COVAX but violated their contractual obligations, now is the time for outward-looking nations to redouble their efforts to vaccinate the world. This is not a question of trying to achieve the impossible, nor is it a choice between jabs at home or jabs abroad. We have the expertise, the technology, the resources and the production capacity, so what is stopping us?

First, there has been a shameful level of mismanagement. It is an absolute scandal that despite repeated promises by the Government to distribute surplus vaccines, more than 600,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine had to be destroyed after passing their expiry date in August last year. In the same month, it emerged that the UK had taken 500,000 doses from COVAX that were meant for poorer countries. What on earth was going on? The reality of the global vaccination effort is that the increasing reliance on ad hoc donations from high-income countries to fill the gaps has meant vaccines arriving in countries late, with little notice and limited shelf lives. That makes it impossible for people in those countries to plan vaccination campaigns and increase absorptive capacity so that they can get those jabs into arms.

I note that of the 30 million doses that the UK pledged to donate last year, only a third had been delivered by November, with the Government leaving it until the absolute last minute to fulfil their promise. Life-saving health interventions must not be treated like essay deadlines. We must do better and give countries adequate notice, with transparent and ambitious timelines, as well as a good level of shelf life on doses when they arrive.

Striving for vaccine equity is not only a moral imperative, but wholly in Britain’s best interests. We know from painful experience that viruses evolve and mutate. Our country’s heroic efforts in the fight against covid have been seriously set back not once, but twice, with the emergence of the more transmissible delta and omicron variants. Neither of those variants originated in the UK, but once they arrived here they quickly swept the country. That is why it is so important that our fight against covid is global.

We know, with great sadness, that another strain of this deadly virus will emerge if we continue down our current path. That is why it is unbelievable that the Government cut by 70% research programmes that track variants. As Gordon Brown so rightly pointed out:

“The grim truth remains that until no one anywhere lives in fear, then everyone everywhere will have to live in fear.”

Simply put, the current pandemic is not something that we can booster our way out of. As the emergence of omicron has shown us, as soon as a booster is administered in the west, another strain of the virus may mutate elsewhere, most often in the fertile breeding grounds where vaccinations are difficult to access.

We must remember that striving for global access to vaccines also makes economic sense. Covid is not just a health emergency but an economic emergency, and instead of being preoccupied with how much global vaccination would cost, we would be better served by considering how much it would save.

Will the Minister therefore confirm how much it costs us per dose to procure vaccines, and will she tell us at what price doses are currently being accounted for on the Government ledgers? Does she agree that donations to low and middle-income countries should not be counted towards the 0.5% ODA target? The sooner we can put an end to the health crisis, the sooner we can put an end to the economic crisis. Only when we can confidently say that the pandemic is over will global supply chains be able to adjust, our economy recover and businesses have the confidence to invest and thrive.

As the managing director of the International Monetary Fund put it, the costs of ensuring global vaccine equity would be

“dwarfed by the outsized benefits”,

with economies likely to see

“the highest return on public investment in modern history.”

This is not rocket science. It is the common sense that Opposition Members have been pleading with the Government to adopt since the pandemic first began.

If the Government are serious about global Britain, they also need to be serious about global health. If we are to have any chance of stamping out this virus once and for all, we need to work with national Governments to ensure that those with the greatest need can access vaccines, regardless of their location or the depth of their pockets. Labour has led the way on this issue, setting out the steps that the Government should take. I encourage the Minister to look at the 10-point plan that the former shadow International Trade Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry), and I laid out in May last year.

In particular, I urge the Government to show global leadership by working with other Governments to negotiate a temporary patent waiver with the World Trade Organisation to allow developing countries to speed up their own vaccine production. The UK is out on a limb on this now. The majority of countries around the world have expressed support for the TRIPS waiver. It is backed by hundreds of human rights lawyers, IP scholars, civil society organisations, economists, medical experts, scientists, most Commonwealth countries and the First Ministers for Scotland and for Wales, as well as by India, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and the US. Only the UK, Switzerland and the European Union are still blocking this. There are more than 100 manufacturers across Africa, Asia and Latin America with the potential to produce mRNA vaccines. Let us give them the tools to manufacture more of the vaccine and get the world jabbed as soon as we can.

Finally, I urge the Government to leverage the UK’s world-leading expertise and work in close co-operation with national healthcare providers and trusted partners on the ground to ensure that systems are in place to allow vaccines to be distributed in an efficient and swift manner. After all, there is little point in turbocharging global vaccine production if those vaccines cannot be distributed to the people who desperately need them.

As we enter the new year, the Government have an opportunity to finally do the right thing. As a proud, outward-looking nation, we simply cannot continue down our current path, looking on as spectators while the world suffers vaccine apartheid. To do so would be not only grossly unjust, but catastrophic to the UK’s interests—our reputation, the world economy and our security.

The Government must commit here today, without qualification, to taking the urgent steps that Labour, Gordon Brown and so many more have urged all along: to look beyond our borders, recognise our mutual common interests and do the right thing. Let us make 2022 the year that we close the great covid gap and do our part to vaccinate the world.

Oral Answers to Questions

Preet Kaur Gill Excerpts

Tuesday 30th November 2021 Commons Chamber

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

I am pleased that Labour has recognised that International Development must remain a Cabinet role, and it is an honour to be able to continue our work to tackle poverty and inequality around the world.

The UK has blocked international agreements to increase the supply of vaccines, has only donated a fraction of the promised doses to low-income countries, and continues to stockpile doses. As a result, hundreds of thousands of doses have expired and have been destroyed, including 600,000 in August alone. In addition, the Government slashed the aid budget for programmes tracking new covid variants. Labour Members warned of this repeatedly, knowing that the virus would continue to mutate unchecked.

Can the Minister tell the House how many surplus vaccines the UK will have by the end of 2021, and why the Government have repeatedly refused to speed up the process of donation to other countries? Will she ensure that we airlift those vaccines immediately?

[Vicky Ford]

Not only did we set up COVAX, but we are one of its largest donors. We have committed ourselves to donating 100 million doses, and that is part of the G7 commitment to sharing 870 million by 2022. Furthermore, we are helping many countries to set up their own vaccine manufacturing. Last Thursday I visited the Institut Pasteur de Dakar in Senegal, which, thanks to help from the UK with the delivery of a business plan, now has the necessary investment to ensure that it will be one of the first manufacturers of covid vaccines in Africa.

--- Later in debate ---

[Amanda Milling]

British people who are currently in red list countries should check the Department’s travel advice for the latest rules on returning to the UK. If they need to change their travel plans, they should speak to their airline or travel agent. Consular staff are available 24/7 to provide assistance to any British national who needs help overseas, through a call to their local consulate, embassy or high commission.

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

The Government promised that they would not abandon the Afghan people, yet millions are teetering on the edge of famine, with winter fast approaching. Will the Minister stop with the meaningless pledges and start with meaningful action? She will have seen the harrowing report from John Simpson and the powerful words of David Beasley, from the World Food Programme, who said:

“imagine that this was your little girl or your little boy, or your grandchild about to starve to death…We let any child die from hunger. Shame on us. I don’t care where that child is.”

A failure to act is a betrayal of those people. So will the funds be disbursed to save lives in Afghanistan today?

[Amanda Milling]

Afghanistan faces one of the largest food security crises in the world. We are aware that the crisis is approaching levels where there is severe, acute malnutrition, which is why we have doubled UK aid for Afghanistan to £286 million this year. In addition, between April and November this year we have disbursed more than £55 million, including life-saving humanitarian support for emergency food, health, nutrition, shelter and water sanitation. We are providing a lot of support.

Ethiopia, Sudan and Tigray: Humanitarian Situation

Preet Kaur Gill Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd November 2021 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Bardell. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) for securing this debate. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), the hon. Members for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson) and for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady), and my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson), who have contributed to an excellent and timely debate on recent events in both Ethiopia and Sudan, and the first anniversary of hostilities in the Tigray region of Ethiopia.

These issues have, sadly, received far too little attention globally. I want to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty), who could not be here today, and other Members for all that they have done to raise awareness of these issues, challenging the UK Government on their response over many months. I cannot emphasise enough the moment of peril we face in the region, or the ordinary civilians who, as ever, bear the brunt of instability and conflict and, indeed, of the wider risk to peace, prosperity and stability in a crucial region of Africa.

We have a long and complex history and responsibility with both Sudan and Ethiopia and a strong interest from the British people in both countries. The human-made famine in Ethiopia in the 1980s is seared in the hearts of the British people, as stated by my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington North. Sudanese and Ethiopian communities across the UK are right to be deeply frightened and concerned by recent events and what they may mean for their loved ones, as stated by my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham, who is Chair of the International Development Committee. The Labour party stands in solidarity with them for peace, democracy, human rights and the humanitarian principle, and urges the UK Government to do all they can to ensure that that is upheld, rather than cutting our aid, our influence and our international leadership at such a crucial time.

I begin with the situation in Ethiopia, in Tigray and beyond. I am deeply concerned about events in recent days that appear to suggest a further descent into conflict and instability, which can only harm the people of Ethiopia, regardless of their politics, ethnicity or regional origins. Reports of the conflict widening, a state of emergency and the risk of conflict reaching the capital, Addis Ababa—the home of the African Union—should be a wake-up call to the world.

I want to state, as I am sure the Minister will, our desire to see, first, a return to peaceful dialogue; secondly, full humanitarian access and an end to attacks and restrictions on humanitarian personnel and operations; thirdly, urgent, full and independent investigations into the atrocities that have been committed, and the full force of international justice brought to bear on the perpetrators, whoever they may be, including the use of targeted UK sanctions under the Magnitsky regime.

It is nothing short of a tragedy, and we need an immediate ceasefire. Ethiopia had been a global success story, moving towards a democratic society, lifting millions out of poverty and acting as a bastion of stability. Ethiopia had been one of the largest recipients of UK aid, which has grown steadily along with our partnership in trade and other areas.

It is approaching a year since the clashes broke out in Tigray between the Tigray People’s Liberation Front and the federal Government. Ethiopia now risks falling into a lethal civil war, undoing decades of peace and prosperity, especially for those in the regions of Tigray, Afar and Amhara. Tens of thousands of refugees have already spilled over the border into Sudan, whose own Government have now been hijacked by a military coup, or have been coerced back into Eritrea, the very country so many were running from, given the history of conflict between the two countries. I am also deeply alarmed by reports of disappearances and targeted attacks on Tigrayans outside of Tigray.

This comes on top of existing economic and health crises and a growing food crisis, with tens of thousands facing the risk of famine. Thousands of Tigray’s children face life-endangering acute malnutrition, a condition that will likely affect their development if they survive. 100,000 could die from the condition in the next year alone. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs recently stated that in one week in early October, only 52,000 people were reached with food, or 1% of the 5.2 million

“targeted population in Tigray, in which half of them received only one or two food items.”

Some 400,000 people in northern Ethiopia are now facing famine-like conditions, as mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Putney. In addition, thousands face the prospect of no banking services: no cash, and complete disruption to commercial activities. Little fuel has gone into Tigray since August; organisations cannot work without fuel as they cannot travel to more remote areas. Medicines have not been going into the region either.

I therefore welcome the Government’s announcement that they have increased aid to Ethiopia by another £29 million, but the United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs has reported that it still faces a funding gap of some £270 million. Staggeringly, UK aid to Ethiopia has in fact decreased by 64.3% between 2018 and 2021 estimates, as stated in the FCDO budget reports.

Would the Minister say what financial assistance the UK has provided to Ethiopia since the onset of the crisis? Has that support been part of the regular official development assistance budget? Will the Government further increase their support, given the worsening situation? As my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth has repeatedly asked Ministers, has total support for Ethiopia gone up or down?

We have also heard shocking reports of 10,000 rapes—an estimate that does not take into account the past several months—in a region where only around 9% of health facilities are functional; of those, only a third have the capacity for clinical management of rape. Amnesty International’s recent report on sexual violence in Tigray is damning. It highlights the sadistic brutality that is being inflicted on women by parties to the conflict, including members of the Ethiopian national defence force, the Eritrean defence force, the Amhara regional police special force, and Fano, an Amhara militia group. In the report, Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s secretary general, says:

“It’s clear that rape and sexual violence have been used as a weapon of war to inflict lasting physical and psychological damage on women and girls in Tigray. Hundreds have been subjected to brutal treatment aimed at degrading and dehumanizing them,”

Yet this is only the start of the crisis facing Tigray and other affected regions.

Ethiopia is also facing the fifth largest covid-19 outbreak in Africa. OCHA reports that only 3% of Tigrayans have been reached with essential sanitation and hygiene messages. Since Members last met to discuss this disaster, little has changed in terms of the human suffering other than that its extent has worsened. The UN recently stated that, from 18 to 28 October, no trucks with humanitarian supplies were able to reach Tigray, and from 1 July to 28 October, only 15% of the trucks needed were able to enter the region. Senior UN staff have been denied access, including the country heads of UNICEF and the head of OCHA. The UN recently announced that it has cancelled flights to the capital, Mekelle, and suspended aid delivery activities as a result of Government-led airstrikes in the area. UN aid chief Samantha Power has said:

“This shortage is not because food is unavailable, but because the Ethiopian Government is obstructing humanitarian aid and personnel, including land convoys and air access.”

I ask the Minister what assessment she has made of humanitarian access for civilians caught up in this conflict, and what consideration is being made of the growing evidence of serious human rights abuses and crimes against humanity? How is evidence such as that brought to public attention by the BBC World Service and human rights organisations being used to ensure that those responsible do not escape justice? She will know that the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has now released a joint report with the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission that investigated abuses between November 2020 and late June 2021. Given the continued gravity of this situation, we call on the UK urgently to support the establishment of an independent investigation by the UN Human Rights Council.

As we all know—and my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington North raised this—the Sudanese transitional Government have been hijacked by a military coup, and I welcome the common view across the House and the international community condemning these events. For Labour, I repeat our complete condemnation of this coup, joining the Government, the UN and other international partners. This is nothing short of a betrayal of the hopes of the Sudanese people after decades of repression and the denial of human rights.

This comes at a critical time for the people for Sudan, after reports that heavy rainfall has led to hundreds of thousands of people being affected and that relief stocks, especially of WASH—water, sanitation and hygiene—products, are depleting. The country currently has 9.8 million severely food-insecure people and 1.1 million refugees. In addition, we know of at least 60,000 refugees from Ethiopia who have fled a war zone to those famine-like conditions. Can the Minister comment on the condition of those refugees, and what humanitarian support and assistance is being provided?

Last Monday, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan took power from the Sudanese transitional Government and declared a state of emergency. Thousands have taken to the streets to protest against this attack on democracy, and reports suggest that several people have been killed and hundreds injured in clashes with armed forces in the capital. Live ammunition has reportedly been used on civilian protesters. Can the Minister confirm whether contact has been made with the general since the urgent question last week, and what action is being taken?

While UK overseas development aid depends on the recipient country upholding its people’s rights—and this military Government have not done so—millions are in need. It is shocking that the UK Government have in effect cut Sudan’s aid by £580 million for 2022, based on estimates, so will the Minister now reconsider those cuts to vital humanitarian assistance for both Sudan and Ethiopia? What assessment has the Minister made of the risk to international judicial processes against former President Bashir for crimes committed in Darfur and elsewhere, as well as against those responsible for more recent massacres?

While the Government pivot to the Indo-Pacific, cut our development budget and weaken our alliances and influence, the situation in east Africa and the horn of Africa goes from bad to worse, with consequences reaching far beyond the regional environment. If we are to avoid catastrophe for the ordinary women, men and children of Ethiopia and Sudan and avoid a descent into even worse consequences across the region, the Government must end their retreat from the world stage, step up, and show some desperately needed moral and political leadership.

Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office

Preet Kaur Gill Excerpts

Wednesday 27th October 2021 Ministerial Corrections

The following is an extract from topical questions on 26 October 2021.

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

I welcome the Secretary of State to her place. Yesterday, it emerged that the Prime Minister’s pleading at the G7 and the United Nations to deliver £100 billion of climate finance has failed. With that, we had another example of the waning global influence of this Government in retreat. I had hoped that the new Foreign and Development Secretary would have put a stop to that, but her first act was to sign off on savage aid cuts to climate programmes and climate-vulnerable countries, disproportionately impacting women and girls, weeks before the most important climate summit of our lifetime. Does the Secretary of State agree that cuts to programmes such as the green economic growth initiative to preserve Papua’s 90% forest cover, and cuts to the aid budget, have actively undermined the UK’s ability to deliver not only at the conference of the parties, but on the world stage, exposing global Britain as little more than a slogan?