Global Poverty

Stephen McPartland Excerpts

Thursday 1st July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Stephen McPartland (Stevenage) (Con)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to make my maiden speech in this important debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Esther McVey), who spoke warmly and eloquently about her constituency, and the issue being debated. I also thank the people of Stevenage for placing their trust in me. I will endeavour to repay that trust by working hard to represent their interests in the House. I pay tribute to my predecessor, Barbara Follett, who is well known within the House and the constituency. I hope that she will be remembered for her many impassioned speeches against apartheid. She followed Tim Wood, who is still remembered fondly in the constituency as a man dedicated to helping local people.

The constituency of Stevenage is centred predominantly on the town of Stevenage and the surrounding villages of Knebworth, Datchworth, Codicote and Aston. The town of Stevenage grew out of a small Saxon settlement in the early 700s, but began to expand massively when, in 1946, it was designated as the first new town and the building of large-scale housing estates began. The town continues to expand to this day. However, it is a very green area, with more than a third of the space being parklands and green spaces. It has few traffic lights, for which we are grateful, and an integrated cycle network. Furthermore, Stevenage football club won promotion to the football league this year, and we are very proud to be hosting league football for the first time ever. The town is also home to many high-technology major employers, such as MBDA, which builds complex weapons systems, Fujitsu and GlaxoSmithKline, which has one of the largest research and development facilities in the area. Arguably, it could even be called the space capital of the UK, as Astrium builds its satellites there and the Mars Rover is under development in Stevenage.

Coming back down to earth, on the edge of the town is the village of Aston, which has a long history and was the home of Aston house, where the Special Operations Executive designed, tested and produced secret weapons. Near this is the village of Datchworth, which is a typical English village with an enormous village fête that attracts people from many miles around and illustrates the sense of community present in the area. Then we have Knebworth, which is a much larger village with an interesting history. It is one of the largest open air concert venues in the UK and has seen numerous acts play, from Led Zeppelin to Robbie Williams. The latter drew a crowd of more than 300,000 people, while 3.5 million watched on television. The southern most point of the constituency is Codicote, where there are dynamic plans to improve sports facilities for the whole community for many generations to come.

The fantastic history, transport links, high-tech industries and sense of community show why so many people choose to come to my constituency from all over the UK to set up home and make a better life for themselves and their families. It really is a microcosm of British society today, which brings me to the issue that I would like to tackle. We must move away from a culture where spending money is seen to be the answer to all the problems in our society. We have to target our resources both at home and abroad to focus on activities that deliver results and will make a real impact on the lives of millions of people.

I will take two examples of where significant progress can be made quickly. The first is the millennium development goal to reduce by two thirds the mortality rate among children under the age of five. There is concern that this, like many of the other goals, will not be achieved by 2015, but if we take targeted action we can make real progress. At the moment, around the world, one child dies every 15 seconds from pneumonia, which is the leading killer of children under the age of five. The majority of those deaths are preventable because there are effective vaccines that can protect against the majority of strains of the disease and effective treatments such as antibiotics.

Increasing evidence shows that pneumonia is linked to global poverty, and 98% of these deaths occur in the developing world, mostly in marginalised communities. Yet pneumonia is a disease that can be managed relatively simply if the resources are available. I am proud of the leading role that GlaxoSmithKline, a major employer in my constituency, has taken to try to save the lives of millions of children in the world’s poorest countries. GSK is one of the first manufacturers to sign an advanced market commitment, which, by guaranteeing an affordable long-term price, will support the sustained use of vaccines. GSK has worked closely with GAVI and IVAC—the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation, and the International Vaccine Access Centre—the leading NGOs in trying to sort the problem out, and whose work I commend.

Turning closer to home, we know that here in the UK, it is possible to help a child out of poverty and improve their chances in life if they receive a good education. However, we are not doing enough; we are not lifting enough people out of poverty. In my constituency, like in so many others across the UK, there are children who have tried so hard in school. There is a cadre of dedicated and professional staff who have helped them along the way and invested so much of themselves in helping those children try to improve their life chances, but the system does not seem to work. Those children are being forced through an education system that pushes them out the other end with little chance of getting a job, as they do not have the skills that local employers want.

We need to encourage employers to work with local schools and colleges, to get fully involved in education, to highlight the skills that are missing and even perhaps to take preventive action, possibly by designing some of the more vocational courses. Perhaps the prize at the end of the course should be a job or an apprenticeship with the employer. We need to be innovative and flexible, so that courses can reflect the skills gap locally and more local people can get local jobs. Only by focusing on results here and abroad will we be able to help people lift themselves out of poverty.

Finally, I would like to finish by urging us all to remember that it is very easy to discuss statistics in these debates in the House, but we must never forget that behind the figures are real people—real families and real lives—who have to live day to day with the decisions that we take.