Climate Finance: Tackling Loss and Damage
Debate between Sarah Champion and Patrick Grady(7 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Patrick Grady
Yes, that is a hugely important concept. We think of all the work done around the Jubilee 2000 campaign, 23 years ago, and the huge global effort and consensus about the need to take action because developing countries were being crippled by the debt they had incurred. That is not good for anyone; it is not good for us either. Progress was made, but again we seem to be going backwards on a lot of that, and the changing climate seems to be a driver. That has to factor into the discussions. The work begun at the most recent COPs, including COP26 in Glasgow and the commitments made last year in Sharm el-Sheikh, must be followed through, and a new governing instrument must be agreed at COP28 this year. The hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), the Chair of the International Development Committee, made important points about the Santiago Network and some of the other mechanisms that exist.
What is needed above all is political will: decision makers who are prepared to take bold and innovative action. As my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee West said, that is exactly what the Scottish Government have done: first, way back in 2012, when they established their climate justice fund in addition to the international development fund; then at COP26, when Nicola Sturgeon pledged £2 million for loss and damage, making the Scottish Government the first western Government to do so; and now just recently when they committed a further £24 million over the next three years to respond to climate change in Rwanda, Malawi and Zambia. Malawi’s President, His Excellency Dr Lazarus Chakwera, said in February that the Scottish Government’s loss and damage fund for projects in his country
“has made huge differences in the people and their livelihoods because they are given a hand up, so the resilience we talk about becomes a practical issue.”
He went on:
“This fight belongs to all of us and I believe that this example will serve as a prototype of what could happen.”
Perhaps now the UK Government will start to play their part. Perhaps they will begin to see, as my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock) said in an earlier contribution, that the savage cuts to the aid budget are a false economy. All the evidence that we have heard in this debate shows that more funding is needed, but this Government are determined to spend less. In the end, it will cost more. The hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan) and others spoke about population movements. Home Office Ministers themselves stand at the Dispatch Box and say that hundreds of millions of people are on the move and that they all want to come to the United Kingdom, but instead of—
Sarah Champion
I apologise for interrupting the hon. Member in full flow. He is making a strong speech and is absolutely right to make this point, because the ODA spend is designed to help people stay safe and prosperous in their own homes, which is what they want. The Minister is taking away the money that would enable people to stay at home and then spending it secondarily when they turn up on our shores.
Patrick Grady
Yes, the hon. Lady is exactly right. Rather than housing people in barges or hotels, or chasing them back into the sea, it would be considerably cheaper if we helped to build resilience in their countries of origin against climate change that we have caused and that our lifestyles are continuing to make worse. That would save money in the long run.
I do have to say that there is also a challenge here for the Labour party. It would be useful to hear the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton), commit to the principle of climate justice and a return to the 0.7% target, because voters, particularly in Scotland, will be listening carefully.
The Scottish Government’s actions have already shown that it is possible to make decisions and show leadership in this area and to encourage others to follow suit. In an independent Scotland, 0.7% would be the floor, not the ceiling, for our spending responsibilities to the poorest and most vulnerable people around the world. It would be the morally right thing to do, as others have said, but it is also in our enlightened self-interest.
Normally I would make a point about the spending being preventive, but the whole point of loss and damage is that it is now almost impossible to prevent some of the effects of climate change that we are already experiencing. Even as we speak, it is unseasonably warm; it is the start of September and we are once again experiencing record temperatures outside. But we can prevent loss of life and livelihoods with the right kind of investment and support for those who need it most. If we do not, it will cost more in the long term and we will all pay the price.
International Covid-19 Response: Innovation and Access to Treatment
Debate between Sarah Champion and Patrick Grady(3 years, 5 months ago)
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Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) for calling for the debate, and I hope that my speech will amplify the points that she is making.
The International Development Committee, which I chair, has been examining the impact of the coronavirus on developing countries, and the contribution of the UK Government to initiatives to help the global south tackle the pandemic. A key part of the UK’s strategy for the global south is funding an array of partnerships and collaborations aiming to develop, at speed, vaccines, therapies and tests for preventing, treating and diagnosing the disease. The Government have allocated the lion’s share of their global coronavirus funding to the race for those products—£388 million initially for vaccines, therapies and tests and, more recently, another £571 million for the production, purchase and distribution of vaccines. That is very welcome, but a key concern that emerged throughout the evidence that we received was about the importance of legal and practical measures to guarantee equitable access to corona vaccines, medicines and tests around the world, based on need, not economic power. The former chief scientific adviser to the Department for International Development, Professor Charlotte Watts, told the IDC:
“It is not only about finding a vaccine that is going to work, but how to ensure that there are the resources and future investment in production capability, so that that can be distributed to low and middle-income countries.”
It is worth recalling why equitable access to medicines is such a concern. First, let me take the example of the antiretrovirals for HIV and AIDS. In Durban in 2000, at the XIII International AIDS Conference, Justice Edwin Cameron of the South African Constitutional Court famously declared that he had been living with AIDS for 33 months, but that,
“there are 24 or 25 million people in Africa who at this moment are dying, and they are dying because they don’t have the privilege that I have of purchasing my life and health.”
In 2000, the anti-retroviral drugs capable of transforming AIDS into a manageable illness were far beyond the means of most South Africans, costing up to $10,000 a year—much more expensive than any other country when compared with generic substitutes. When South Africa passed legislation to facilitate the use of cheaper, generic and imported products on public health grounds, 39 multinational pharmaceutical companies banded together to sue the Government for violating WTO rules. Rightly, that resulted in a PR disaster for the pharmaceutical industry. The case was dropped and the WTO recognised member states’ rights to take such measures to protect public health and, in particular, to promote access to medicines for all. But even now, the use of that safeguard is largely limited to the original HIV/AIDS drugs because of the complexities required in legislation, health system weaknesses and political pressure.
Let us look at cancer. Cancer drugs are a lucrative pharmaceutical market—for example, representing 27% of the sector’s revenue in the US. Efforts to set prices to recoup research and development costs over a set period are one thing, but funding the inflated billion-dollar trade in whole companies holding just one or two attractive patents seems less defensible. Whatever the reason, low and middle-income countries invariably find the prices set to take advantage of demand in a high-income country an insurmountable barrier to access. Pricing invariably results in wide variations in survival rates. For example, the US five-year overall survival rate for breast cancer is 84%, compared with just 12% in Gambia. That is hardly equitable.
Finally, I want to talk about polio. The polio story is essentially a triumph, with a 99% reduction in cases since the start of the global effort in 1985. However, each year, the oral polio vaccine, which is widely used in the global south, is linked to outbreaks of the disease where the wild virus has been eliminated. The injectable vaccine is an inactive virus, but it costs about $3. The oral vaccine, at about 12 cents, contains live virus. Unfortunately, children can shed a mutated version of the live virus in their stools, which can then infect unvaccinated children in areas with poor sanitation. Clearly there are other considerations than just costs when comparing injected and ingested doses of medicine, but the reality is that cost kills.
Let us hold these examples in our mind as we consider equitable access to future coronavirus products. And let me be blunt: the prospect of the international community behaving morally, or at least rationally, on a global scale over the distribution of an effective vaccine, or even accurate and simple tests, at an affordable price, is not good. In his September speech to the first virtual United Nations General Assembly, the Prime Minister rightly lambasted the international community over its fractious and competitive reaction to the procurement of personal protective equipment during the first wave of the pandemic—and that was just over masks and aprons. Imagine the pressure on every Government to deliver the long-awaited panacea of covid-19 immunity to their own populations.
Any rational response to the pandemic must surely take account of the science and the almost unique status of this crisis by incorporating the sustainable development principle of leaving no one behind. No one will be safe and secure until everyone is covid-free. For once, everyone’s interests are overtly aligned. The UK finds itself in a unique moment in time when we can reposition ourselves as a global leader for good. The soft power gained by doing the right thing for the very poorest in the world, and by standing up to those looking to profit from others’ misery, will be immeasurable. I am grateful for the leading role the UK has taken to date in the development of covid vaccines and products.
Patrick Grady
I will be brief, because there is pressure on time, but I just want to say that the hon. Lady is making an incredibly powerful speech that is demonstrating the importance of the scrutiny that her Select Committee has been able to provide. I want to re-emphasise the point I made to the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) that the Scottish National party fully supports the continuation of that Committee, either as a non-departmental Select Committee or as a wider official development assistance-scrutinising Committee. I hope that those on the Government Benches will bear that in mind.
Sarah Champion
I am extremely grateful for the hon. Member’s support of the International Development Committee. Development is a specific and key area of the work that we do, and it demands parliamentary scrutiny.
I ask the Minister to give us some certainty today on the Government’s commitment and resolve to fight to ensure that covid drugs and treatments are accessible to everybody, not just those with the deepest pockets. Will the Government support the proposed waiver of all intellectual property monopolies related to covid-19 tools, as put forward by India and South Africa to the WTO? Can the Minister confirm that, for all R&D projects that the UK has funded, transparency on finances and an obligation for resulting products to be free from monopolies were embedded in those contracts at the start and will be enforced? Finally, will the Government follow Germany, Australia, Canada and Israel in championing the use of legal safeguards that all World Trade Organisation members can implement to override patent monopolies if public health is at risk?
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Sarah Champion and Patrick Grady(3 years, 10 months ago)
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Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)
Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)