Global Hunger

Debate between Tony Cunningham and Tom Clarke

Wednesday 23rd January 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Tom Clarke (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Bayley, and I welcome the opportunity to debate this issue. I thank Mr Speaker for granting such an important debate, which could not come at a more appropriate time.

This is the year for the UK to take decisive action to end the worst scandal of our time, the blight of hunger. It is also fitting that this is the year when we take the leadership of the G8, nearly 10 years on from our pledge to make poverty history. It is time that we assessed our progress and made a further commitment to the world’s poor.

In the past decade, we have come a long way towards eradicating poverty in the world’s poorest regions. More than 50 million children have started going to school in sub-Saharan Africa, while deaths from killer diseases such as malaria have fallen by almost 75%. But we have not gone far enough. While one in eight women, men and children go to bed hungry every night, and each year 2.3 million children still die from malnutrition, the inhuman tragedy is unacceptable and we simply cannot rest on our achievements.

It is clear that the most vulnerable in our society are still not benefiting from our efforts to make poverty history. The millennium development goals have not yet delivered the structural changes that are so desperately needed. For that reason, today I will outline a vision that I believe this country can turn into reality, provided we seize this very important moment. We need to join the 100 organisations that are launching their campaign today to call on the UK Government to take action.

[Sir Tony Cunningham (Workington) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that this is a unique point in history and that we desperately need to seize this unique opportunity?

[Mr Clarke]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. I am delighted that he is shadow Minister for International Development, and I know that he will pursue these points with great enthusiasm.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Clarke]

I am sorry; I said earlier that I wanted to give the Minister a reasonable amount of time.

The situation seems to me to be absolutely disgraceful. Beyond the way land is bought, sold and used, the system is opaque. Once food is produced, it enters the global market, which is dominated by a handful of multinational companies in a system with little transparency. That is not to say that those companies are inherently bad, but we would be foolish to overlook their incredible power. For example, 90% of the global trade in grain is controlled by five companies. Who benefits from that control? Shareholders, or people who are hungry? Companies have more information about us than ever before, yet as global citizens we have little useful information about their social and environmental impact. There are reporting requirements under the Companies Act 2006, but they are not useful to investors, producers, Government or civil society. Decisions continue to be made in the shadows, without participation by the people they affect. That cannot be right.

We in the UK could take a leading role to end the scandal. With the Prime Minister at the head of the G8, we can do a great deal. We could take action to ensure that small-scale farmers keep hold of their land to grow food. We could crack down on the tax dodgers depriving poor countries of resources to ensure the right to food.

[Sir Tony Cunningham]

rose—

[Mr Clarke]

I said that I would not give way, but I will on this one point.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Tony Cunningham]

I was in Zambia recently, when a British company owed the Zambian Government £70 million in unpaid tax. Imagine how many hospitals, schools, clinics, vaccinations, mosquito nets and so on could be made available to the Zambian people for that much money.

[Mr Clarke]

I am glad that my hon. Friend managed to make that important point.

We could work for global agreement on new sources of climate finance, which is important. We could underpin everything with transparency, the rule of law and strong institutions. To do all that, we must fulfil our existing commitments on aid and investment for agriculture and nutrition, the very basis of a functioning society.

If we look back in the history of our great nation, to the time of social writers such as Charles Dickens, hunger was a plague on our society, but political leadership took Britain out of that abyss. If we look at the world we live in today, there are still many challenges. The poverty in our own country is very real. The recession hits the poorest families hardest, and resources are scant. There is always the temptation to see no further than our immediate needs, but I sincerely urge the Government and the people of our country not to make that mistake.

Britain is where it is today because of key political choices made during times that were also hard; the NHS and the welfare state were created when the country had barely recovered from the second world war. Now is the time, during hardship, when our effort counts most. As Martin Luther King, Junior, once said:

“Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable...Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.”

We can make a difference. If the Government were to commit to enshrining in legislation the promise to spend 0.7% of our gross national income on aid, they would ensure that the UK is one of the first to reach a promise made 42 years ago, setting an outstanding example for others to follow. I will put that into meaningful context. Once reached, the 0.7% target amounts to 1.6p in every pound spent by Government, compared with 5.8p for defence, nearly 20p for health and just over 30p for welfare. That contribution would take us one step closer to a world free from hunger, but it is not enough; we must go further.

In the midst of a crisis, the UK has a vital opportunity in 2013 to lead a new drive to tackle global poverty and hunger. We will be one of the first major countries to reach 0.7%; we are the chair of the open government partnership; we will be working closely with the current presidency of the EU, the Irish Government; and, above all, we have the presidency of the G8. We must lead other countries at the G8 in increasing contributions to address hunger. We must collectively commit, at the very least, an additional £417 million a year to sustainable small-scale agriculture to achieve food security for more than 418,500 people.

Will the Minister tell us whether the UK plans to take forward those commitments? Of equal importance, it is crucial to establish when the Government will put aside parliamentary time to pass the 0.7% Bill, thereby fulfilling their promise.

Women and children in the world’s most fragile places are the furthest from meeting the millennium development goals, and their well-being must be our priority. That is not only a moral duty; it makes economic sense. In 2006, the World Bank estimated that malnutrition causes a 10% loss in lifetime earnings for individuals, and reduces gross domestic product by as much as 3%. An estimated 20% of deaths related to lack of nutrition are caused by short stature, which is an outcome of childhood malnutrition. That is not a failure of production; it is a failure in the way we process, distribute, buy, sell and consume food and manage waste. In other words, the global food system is broken, and it is killing people.

According to the United Nations Children’s Fund, approximately 195 million children globally are stunted, and data from previous years show that almost 80% of those children live in just 24 countries. Studies have shown that if basic affordable measures are introduced to address key immediate causes, child death could drop by as much as 25%. It is by investing in children in the countries most affected by hunger that we will make the biggest impact.

Our children are our future, and to neglect those in greatest need is to harbour the resentment and bitterness that later erupts into the wars that we now see spreading across Africa and elsewhere. I am delighted that today our non-governmental organisations and charities are coming together for the first time in eight years to launch a major new campaign, which shows the politicians who believe in it that we are not alone. I hope colleagues can attend the launch tonight in Mr Speaker’s house.

Those charities and agencies are there every day, on the ground, all over the world helping people in need on our behalf, as I have seen for myself. Their supporters, the people of the United Kingdom, have time and again dug deep into their pockets, and generosity and compassion have prevailed. They are, therefore, in a strong position to invite politicians to add to what they have been doing, and they are about to do so again. Their call this time is that we do everything we can to close the widening gap and fix the food system for our common future.

Beyond state action, we need to ensure that every powerful force in the food system plays a positive role, including multinational companies. We can do that through creating transparency, which leads to accountability. By updating the Companies Act with a simple reference to human rights, the information that companies have to disclose about the impact of their operations can be made useful, and paint an honest picture rather than showing edited highlights. It is not too much to ask that those with great power are held to account. Transparency is about highlighting good practice and exposing bad practice, encouraging businesses to take a longer-term view of their business models and practices. At the same time, we can demand more transparency in how the Governments of developing countries spend their money—a type of transparency that we enjoy here at home—so that their citizens can also hold them to account, and so that we can ensure our money is well spent.

Campaigning is not always comfortable for Governments and politicians, but we can reflect upon what we can achieve: Live Aid, the jubilee debt campaign, the millennium development goals, the Make Poverty History campaign and the Green Climate Fund. Those things changed the world for the better, and we can do that again.

Timing is vital; the scale of the challenge should fill us with urgency. If we do not act now, the situation will get a great deal worse as food prices become more volatile and environmental shocks become more frequent and destructive, not to mention another generation’s full potential being lost to the scourge of starvation.

That sense of urgency should also make us hopeful, not only because of the opportunities that are before us this year or because of the commitment of our people, but because of the commitment here in Parliament. While world hunger is high up our agenda, and rightly so, it is time that we all worked together, using all our skills, resources and commitment to get child hunger off the table.