Sustainable Development Goals

Stephen Phillips Excerpts

Thursday 10th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the Sustainable Development Goals.

This motion also stands in the name of the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg).

On three occasions this week, the House has had the opportunity to debate the shocking and harrowing scenes we have witnessed through the media, as displaced and vulnerable people risk their lives, and often those of their children, to escape conflict and a poverty of existence that renders the possibility of a horrible death in the Mediterranean preferable to staying in their homes. I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for having granted this debate, but it does not, at least on the face of the motion before the House, afford a fourth such opportunity, but in truth, given what we have witnessed, it is not only timely but relevant to the underlying causes of what we have seen, as well as to our response as a nation and as individuals living in a global world.

The sustainable development goals that member states of the United Nations will agree this month and that have been driven entirely positively by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister in his largely unsung role as the chairman of the high-level panel responsible for the underlying principles are about the sort of world in which we want to live in this century. They are about doing what is right by the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people, and they are ultimately about the security of this country and of the British people.

As I made clear in my remarks in the debate I secured on corruption in Africa shortly before the summer recess, what we do as a country on international aid matters. It matters not only because we have a moral responsibility to do what is right, but because our spending on aid represents an investment in our security here at home, as well as that of our neighbours and allies. Why that is matters not, though it has much to do with the fact that the world is now so much a smaller and better connected place than when I and, I venture to say, most other hon. Members were growing up.

Technology has meant not only that we can know what is happening in nearly any part of the world almost immediately, but has made international travel faster and easier and revealed to many in the developing world the enormous disparity between our own comfortable lives and their daily struggle for existence. It is little wonder, when faced with extreme poverty, that many are prepared to make the decision to try to reach the developed world, and it is no surprise at all that when conflict arises the decision to try to reach Europe or north America is made by quite so many people.

If we get development right, which is what the sustainable development goals seek for the entire world community, the scenes we have all witnessed over the last few weeks will become less frequent. But if we get it wrong, we will not only have failed in the duties we pray for help in discharging at the beginning of each day in this House, but will have imperilled our own security and prosperity.

What are we talking about? What are the sustainable development goals that we and the world will shortly adopt and that will direct our aid spending over the coming years, and how, indeed, have we got here?

The millennium development goals, with which some at least are familiar, were agreed by the United Nations in 2001. Again, under the then Prime Minister, this country led the way, and the Labour party deserves suitable credit for that and for the moral lead the then Government demonstrated.

Eight in number, the millennium development goals sought to halve extreme poverty across the world by 2015, and in that, as the World Bank has reported, they have enjoyed a great deal of success. But that is not the whole story, for as the United Nations itself says in this year’s “Millennium Development Goals Report”:

“Although significant achievements have been made on many of the MDG targets worldwide, progress has been uneven across regions and countries, leaving significant gaps. Millions of people are being left behind, especially the poorest and those disadvantaged because of their sex, age, disability, ethnicity or geographic location.”

The message is clear, and was apparent even when the post-2015 development agenda began to be discussed by the world community three years ago: that while the goals have been largely effective, and have done much to shift the development focus to ensuring the eradication of poverty across the world, an enormous amount remains to be done.

It is with that in mind that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, with the Presidents of Liberia and Indonesia, published their work on the post-2015 development agenda in 2013, to which the world community has since been working. The principles there set forth—that no one in the world should be left behind; that sustainable development should be at the core for all countries, developed and developing; that economies should be transformed to ensure prosperity through growth; that peace should prevail; that all should have access to open and accountable institutions; and that the world should act together to end poverty—underpin not only what has been done since, but the final draft of the sustainable development goals themselves.

We first saw those following the work recommended at the Rio+20 conference in the zero draft published last summer, and there were at that stage, to my mind and that of others, simply too many goals and targets, laudable as each no doubt was. I know—or at least I think I know—that that was the view of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development. As she said in a speech on 7 July 2014:

“The UK wants a simple, clear and inspiring set of goals and targets that centre on eradicating poverty. We believe this needs to include the missing issues from the MDGs: economic growth, governance, rule of law, tackling corruption, peace and stability, and putting women and girls first. We know the argument is far from won in the UN. There is broad agreement about the need to tackle extreme poverty…but a lack of consensus about how we tackle the root causes”.

In her aim of reducing the number of goals, targets and indicators, my right hon. Friend has been largely unsuccessful, although I gather from following the negotiations that that is not for want of trying. However, I pay tribute to her work and that of the Department in carrying forward the efforts started by the Prime Minister, and she has made enormous progress in focusing the goals from the zero draft, and in ensuring that things that the UK cares about—such as empowering women and girls—have taken centre stage. Under the leadership of my right hon. Friend, the expertise in DFID has benefited not only this country but the world community, and I have little doubt that that will rebound to her credit and that of Britain over the coming decades as the sustainable development goals lift many people out of extreme poverty and ensure a prosperity and peaceful existence that helps to secure our own position here at home.

As with all documents negotiated at an international level, there remain things that we in the UK think could perhaps have been done better, including the way in which some of the goals are framed. Goal 4, for example, seeks to:

“Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.”

There is a plethora of linked targets and indicators, of course, but how, objectively, progress and compliance can properly be measured, particularly with poor or absent data sets in many developing countries, remains to be seen. Goal 14 provides another example. It requires that we:

“Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development.”

What that means to the Government of, say, a west African littoral state may be very different from what it means to a landlocked country in central Asia. How the goals will be interpreted in the coming years in the light of the 169 targets and 304 indicators represents a challenge for the international community, and I hope that my right hon. Friend the Minister will say something in responding to the debate about DFID’s approach to this task.

[Mrs Helen Grant (Maidstone and The Weald) (Con)]

The goals are broad and ambitious, and a wide and rigorous consultation process has been undertaken. Does my hon. and learned Friend agree that the goals relate to many sections of society?

[Stephen Phillips]

I do agree that they relate to many sections of society, and I would go further and say they stretch across almost the entire work that Governments in this country and throughout the developed world do. These goals will, of course, apply to the developed world as well as the developing world.

[Nicola Blackwood (Oxford West and Abingdon) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. and learned Friend on securing this important debate. May I take him back to the focus on specific goals and SDG 5 on gender equality? I share his concern about the plethora of targets and the implementation. Does he agree that we must ensure that the progress we made in the last Parliament in targeting violence against women and girls is not lost and that we must ensure more security for women and girls in some of the most unstable countries in the world, otherwise we will never achieve our aim of securing growth and prosperity in these countries?

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[Stephen Phillips]

I agree with my hon. Friend. The truth of the matter is we cannot make progress on eradicating poverty across the world and ensuring peace and stability for the most vulnerable people unless and until we get the message across that girls and women must have precisely the same opportunities as boys and men, and we must protect them in all respects.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

On gender equality, what could be further achieved on FGM, which is currently quite high profile and about which people often contact me?

[Stephen Phillips]

FGM is, in a sense, part of the sustainable development goals. It is an abhorrent practice, and this Government and previous Governments have done what they can to change the law here to ensure that we stamp it out as much as we can. I know from my own questions to Ministers in the last Parliament and in this one that it is an important issue for this Government. The whole House agrees not only that FGM is an important issue but that it needs to be eradicated.

The strength of the millennium development goals was their clarity—their ability not only to focus minds and action but to communicate clearly what the world sought to achieve and by when. We set out to reduce extreme poverty by half, and by this year more than 700 million people will no longer live on less than $1.25 a day. We set out to eliminate the disparity in primary school enrolment between boys and girls, and we have done just that. The world also set out to tackle HIV, malaria and a host of other diseases, on which incredible progress has been made, despite my own bout of dengue last year.

In 2030, however, when I rise to challenge the Government of the day on the progress that has been made—I give notice now that I fully intend to do just that in 15 years’ time—will it be as clear, given the more amorphous terms of the sustainable development goals, that we have progressed as much? I hope it will—no doubt the whole House does—but I have my doubts that it will be as easy to show that we have made real achievements in tackling the root causes of the problems that do so much to impoverish the lives of many across the developing world and keep them in poverty.

No doubt we will have made real achievements by then, but the problem with international development that, at least until the last few weeks, all Members will have encountered is that it is often difficult to explain to constituents not only what we are doing but that those actions are having a real effect and benefiting all of us here just as much as they benefit those whose lives we are seeking to make better. This country spends—as it must now do legally and, I add, morally—0.7% of our gross national income on international development, yet how many of us are challenged again and again over that figure and over the value for money it delivers, particularly in times of necessary austerity in the public finances? For many, it is not enough that we are doing the right thing; we need to show that what we are doing delivers value for money and security for this country.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) understood this problem when he was Secretary of State. The fact that we have not only delivered our international obligation in relation to the 0.7%, when so many others have not, but also begun to communicate the effectiveness and importance of DFID’s spending in this area to a sometimes sceptical public owes much to the work that he did in transforming the agenda and lifting DFID from the shadows to become a Department that is properly seen as being partly responsible for the security of this country and its standing in the world. As I am sure the Minister will accept, we would not be where we are but for my right hon. Friend, nor would the Department have been able to deliver what it has delivered in negotiating the sustainable development goals and ensuring that the final draft that has emerged from three years of hard work will achieve as much as I believe it will.

Before closing and affording others the opportunity to express their own views as we move towards the point at which the goals will be adopted in New York later this month, I want to say a word or two about data and about money. I have already mentioned that, assuming the goals are adopted in New York, progress and compliance in relation to the goals is to be measured by reference to 169 targets and 304 indicators. Ensuring familiarity with those targets and indicators among non-governmental organisations, Government Departments, donors, recipients and others will represent a challenge on a scale for which the international development community is perhaps ill prepared.

The education of policy makers and those who implement their decisions will be critical, as will the resourcing of developing countries in particular, not just to educate those who need to carry out the work but to enable robust data to be collected routinely and in a manner that permits easy utilisation. Too often in developing countries, donors and the United Nations require data in different formats that are either absent or incapable of collection at least in the form in which they are sought. Too often, data that have already been provided are sought again and again, even if in slightly different ways, because the churn of staff within NGOs and donors means that everyone has their own way of working and measuring success against the indicators to which they are working.

This is an issue on which DFID, as a world leader, has a particular role to play. Insofar as it can properly be done, standardising data collection and sets across the international development community would not only enable progress on the sustainable development goals to be more transparent and easily communicable but free up the time of civil servants and others who are too frequently found tearing their hair out trying to find substitute markers for data for which they are being asked but to which they have no access. I would like to hear from the Minister that he and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will look into this agenda and make progress on it after the adoption of the goals. As I know from my own travels across the developing world, and across Africa in particular, that would do a great deal to help.

Then there is the question of money. It is unacceptable, given the commitments made by the richest countries in the world, that so many are still failing to meet the 0.7% target set at the Gleneagles summit. We have met that target, and I have little doubt that the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary would agree that we have pulled our weight, yet we remain the only major developed economy that has done so. As I have repeatedly said, doing so ensures our own safety and security and those of our allies, and they need to pull their weight too.

[Catherine West]

Will the hon. and learned Gentleman give way?

[Stephen Phillips]

I am afraid not; I want to make some progress.

The financing for development conference in Addis Ababa in July was supposed to offer a milestone for others to meet their obligations, but very little appears to have changed and there seems to be no new money on the table. I hope to hear from the Minister that this is a priority for the Government, and that DFID and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office are doing everything they can to ensure that our international partners do as we have done.

It is true that the current migration crisis has been driven largely by events in Syria, in relation to which, in my view, the House took the wrong decision last year. However, it remains the case that many seeking to reach Europe and these shores are coming from north and west Africa and elsewhere. They are seeking to come here because their poverty dictates that they take the hard decision to leave their homes to seek a better life in Europe. If we get the sustainable development goals and their implementation right, fewer will choose that route. If we eradicate poverty in all its forms, as the world will promise to do in New York, there will be no point to that migration.

These goals matter. They matter to the garment worker in Dhaka in Bangladesh, to the fisherman in Bureh in Sierra Leone and to the market trader in Belen market in Iquitos in Peru. But they also matter to me, as they should matter to all Members in this House and to everyone we seek to represent as we discharge our duties in this place. Though they may still have failings, I welcome the sustainable development goals and I commend the motion to the House.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

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[Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for noticing me as I jumped to my feet with great rapidity. I congratulate the hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Stephen Phillips) and my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) on securing this crucial debate. I also want to declare that I spent more than a year living and working in Sierra Leone as director of the British Council there and four years at the World Economic Forum, which of course deals with many of the issues we are discussing.

The sustainable development goals represent a vitally important set of targets that the international community must achieve if we are to secure a future based on durable and inclusive growth. As the House knows, every one of those goals is critical, but today I want to concentrate on No. 13, which focuses on combating climate change and its impacts.

The first point to establish is that there is no longer any reasonable doubt about the science of climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a gathering of the world’s 1,000 most eminent climate scientists, and they have made it absolutely clear that human activity is causing global warming. Indeed, as Lord Deben—formerly a Conservative Member of Parliament, and now the chairman of the UK’s Committee on Climate Change—has stated,

“The connection between global warming and human activity is now as clear as the connection between smoking and lung cancer”.

Human activity is the problem, and human activity must therefore provide the solutions if we are to prevent a rise of at least 3.2° in global temperatures by 2100. The consequences of that would be all too real: the seas rising because the ice caps are melting, heat waves more frequent, and—as we have seen very close to home—flooding and extreme weather on the up. If nothing is done, we can expect more droughts and floods, affecting food security and global poverty, and hitting the poorest countries with the lowest CO₂ emissions hardest. We can expect seawater to become more acidic, affecting biodiversity and, again, food security. We can expect the sea level to rise by between 0.5 and 1.5 metres, displacing more than 100 million people and dwarfing the current tragic refugee crisis. To put it simply, if we are to have any chance of meeting the 17 sustainable development goals, we must start with a serious, actionable, large-scale plan to tackle climate change.

Climate change is, of course, tragically topical, because all the signs point towards the refugee crisis becoming increasingly acute as conditions in the global south become worse as a result of drought and severe weather. That was put succinctly by Jamie Drummond of ONE only yesterday:

“In our analysis, there are three extremes—extreme poverty, extreme climate and extreme ideology—that risk taking over certain parts of the world, and if we do not have a pretty enlightened and aggressive long-term investment strategy, future flows of refugees will increase.”

Indeed, they will increase exponentially.

If we are going to feed the world, as the SDGs compel us to do, we need farmers and farmland, much of which is threatened by rising sea levels, desertification and acidification due to climate change. If you own an agri-business and those farmers work for you, it will not be a case of smaller profit margins; it will be the end of your business, and the end of your livelihood and theirs. A coastal city as vast as New York or a coastal town such as Port Talbot in my constituency of Aberavon—both reliant, to differing degrees, on tourism and coastal industries—will find that its economy, and eventually its very existence, are threatened.

As I said at the beginning of my speech, I worked for the World Economic Forum for four years. During that time, I was privy to the thoughts of CEOs and leaders of some of the world’s largest companies. and most had the same message: “Your business is not sustainable if your planet is not sustainable.” The sustainable development goals give us an opportunity to inspire businesses and Governments to reinvent growth—growth of the right sort, which does not lead to the impoverishment of billions of people or the destruction of our planet—and public-private partnership is the key to that reinvention.

I deeply regret the Government’s decisions on renewable energy subsidies, and I urge them to reconsider. However, I welcome the fact that the sustainable development goals, as a whole, are more business-oriented than the millennium goals were. There are more references to job creation and sustainable growth, both of which can be achieved if businesses and Governments invest in green technology and energy innovation. For their part, businesses must accept and embrace their responsibility to commit themselves to those measures, although many will be regulatory and could be spun by short-termists as burdensome. While aid will be necessary for some of the goals, and I would never advocate cuts in overseas development assistance, combating climate change will require large-scale investment, both public and private, first and foremost.

[Stephen Phillips]

The hon. Gentleman is making a very important speech. Does he agree that, if we are to achieve the sustainable development goals, it is critical for a proper and enforceable agreement to be made on climate change at the Paris summit later this year? Does he agree that that is part and parcel of the solution to the issue with which the SDGs seek to grapple?

[Stephen Kinnock]

I absolutely agree and therefore underline the importance of us leading by example, which is why I mentioned some of the regrettable decisions made in removing subsidies for renewables. Nevertheless, the Paris discussions and the SDGs mesh together and I hope we will show leadership in Paris in the coming months.

Supporting and enabling sustainably minded business is the key to generating significant wealth at home and abroad. With that in mind, I will finish by saying that there will necessarily be trade-offs and this will be a real test of the Government’s dedication to, and understanding of, the sustainable development goals. Climate change is a classic example of such trade-offs. In the short term fossil fuel companies are likely to perceive themselves as losers, even if the end result is a net improvement for society and the global economy in general. Effective leadership from all concerned Government Departments will be necessary, and innovative solutions will have to be found.

I therefore urge the Government to take seriously the following five recommendations: first, to reverse the recently announced cuts to renewable energy subsidies; secondly, to invest in renewables infrastructure and the research capabilities required to engineer them; thirdly, to attach climate change conditions to overseas aid directed to infrastructure projects; fourthly, to convene a global sustainability summit to develop a road map for public-private partnerships for sustainable growth; and, fifthly, to reform the companies legislation to ensure that the articles of incorporation of any given company must include a commitment to what the World Business Council for Sustainable Development calls triple-bottom line reporting—namely people, planet, profit. This means that the performance of a company should be measured not only in terms of its short-term profitability, but also in terms of its commitment to fulfilling its societal and environmental obligations.

If the Government could adopt these five recommendations, I believe that our country would be well on the way to showing real leadership and making a serious contribution to achieving sustainable development goal 13.

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[Stephen Phillips]

If anybody thought that my right hon. Friend, who answers for the Government in this debate, lacked passion as he enters his sixth decade—or perhaps his seventh; I am not sure—they have obviously failed to see him at the Dispatch Box today.

This has been an incredibly important debate, in which the views of the House have been made clear to Ministers—those views have been almost unanimous—about the importance of the sustainable development goals. My hon. Friend and neighbour the Member for Boston and Skegness (Matt Warman) talked about the extent to which our constituents sometimes raise with us international development and the amount we spend on it. This Department—under my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, whom I am pleased to see on the Front Bench listening to some of the contributions in the debate—is leading the way in making clear to our constituents quite how important international development is, both for doing the right thing and for our security in our country.

It is impossible in the time available to do justice to the contributions that have been made in this debate, but it has been a full debate, in which views have been expressed across the House, making it clear that there is political leadership here and that we will do the right thing and the thing that is necessary for our national security. For all the reasons that I gave when I opened the debate, I commend the motion before the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the Sustainable Development Goals.

Lay Members of the committee on Standards

Ordered,

That, in accordance with Standing Order No. 149A and the Resolution of the House of 17 March 2015, Mr Peter Jinman, Mr Walter Rader and Ms Sharon Darcy be re-appointed lay members of the Committee on Standards for the period ending on 30 March 2017.—(Dr Thérèse Coffey.)