Disability-inclusive Development

Alex Norris Excerpts

Thursday 31st October 2019 Westminster Hall

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Evans, and to respond for the Opposition on a very important and impactful report, to which many hon. Members have contributed, not least yourself as a member of that Committee. The report is clearly the culmination of the Committee’s work and focus spanning several chairships, and as my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) said, it will be his final report. The Committee’s work will continue to make a difference.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend—he is my friend—for whom I have considerable admiration and lots of respect. I believe that that view is shared not just among Labour Members, but by hon. Members across the House, who know that he is a man of great integrity, personal character and obvious and clear talent, and that he is fundamentally a very decent person. As we know, there is lots of room for that across the House. In that spirit, I would say that I am sad to see him go, but he will only be a phone call away, so I will still be able to ask him daft questions which he will take in the spirit in which they are asked. I will not take my tribute any further because I know that that is not what he wants, but it was important to say that. The report is excellent and it is characteristic of my hon. Friend’s time as Committee Chair and of the excellent colleagues who served with him.

It was impossible not to be moved and struck by the story about east Kilimanjaro told by the hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy). If ever there were a story that characterised a small world, that is it. It also made a really important point about Britain’s future place in the world and the importance of being generous with our knowledge, whether in medicine, as in this case, in sciences, as we talk about tackling climate change globally, in nutrition, in farming and so on. We have an awful lot of expertise and excellent academic institutions in this country, and we have lived experience as well. We ought to be really generous with how we share that. If we do, we can make a really big impact. We will always talk about aid in terms of the 0.7% of GDP commitment, which is exceptionally important, but sharing knowledge is a soft way of contributing even more, and that is really important.

The hon. Member for Stafford also made a point about jobs. I often say that my love for development stems from my values. The things that I want for my community are the things I want for the rest of the world. His point about employment and employers is really important. In Nottingham, when that has been done well, it has been transformative for people and businesses, but when it has been done poorly it has had quite the opposite impact, and that applies around the world. I hope that we can be generous in the way that we support others to do as well as they can. I wish the hon. Gentleman very well in the future.

The hon. Member for Woking (Mr Lord) spoke about Britain’s place in the world, which chimed with the previous contributions. He mentioned the Syrian refugee programme, and I do not think I would be too bold to say that there was a universal sense across all communities of just how good that scheme was, and how much communities stepped up and rallied around. We are very proud of that in Nottingham; it is clearly the case in Woking, too.

We should not be shy of acknowledging the importance of faith communities in such schemes. Whatever their faith, people from faith communities in my constituency make a massive impact on a daily basis for those who have the least. They do that because they think it important. I suspect that other hon. Members will agree that when the road is long from visiting projects, and we are having difficult days, seeing those schemes and meeting those people fills our hearts and sends us off with a spring in our steps. We should not miss the opportunity to highlight and trumpet that work whenever we can.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby said, 1 billion people—almost one in eight globally—live with disabilities. Among the poorest people in the world, that number is one in five, and rising. Including people with disabilities in development and humanitarian interventions is not a side issue; it directly affects millions of people in fundamental ways. I commend DFID for the global leadership that it has shown on this issue in recent years. Only when we lead by example can we raise the bar internationally, and I believe that DFID has made a significant effort to do so. That work is a good example of what an independent DFID can do and of the leadership that it can show at home and abroad. On behalf of the Opposition, I put on record our commitment to the DFID’s disability agenda and affirm that it is crucial in the fight against inequality of justice. We would plan to make significant steps in the leadership of that fight, perhaps from 13 December.

I would be interested to hear the Minister’s reflections on three points. First, as my hon. Friend said, momentum and political will on disability should not be lost. I welcome the Government’s agreement with the report’s first recommendation on developing a robust accountability mechanism for commitments made at the global disability summit in July 2018. A significant amount of time has passed since that summit, and once the election period is over, it will have been 18 months. The mechanism is not likely to be in place until 2020. We risk losing a bit of momentum from the summit. Will the Minister tell us what is taking so long? Can he elaborate on what the plans and timing are, and whether a follow-up summit is planned in due course?

As my hon. Friend said, there has been significant political change in the Department in recent years. Obviously, there have been four Secretaries of State, two of whom—the right hon. Members for Witham (Priti Patel) and for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt)—have made disability a real priority. I want Ministers to make it clear today that this is a departmental priority, not just a priority of individuals; that this will not relate to the politics of the day; and that any future changes will not mean that this will be lost as a priority. It is important to have that clarity on the record.

Secondly, it is important that we talk positively about the impact that businesses have in this area, but also reference some of the risks involved in that, and our part in the world and in global trade in future. I welcome DFID’s work, set out in its response to recommendation 29, to better include people living with disabilities in its humanitarian interventions. Whether in conflict, in the climate crisis or in humanitarian crises, people living with disabilities are by definition the most vulnerable and at risk of being forgotten and/or excluded. Inclusion or exclusion can be the difference between life or death.

We know that conflict causes disabilities, life-changing injuries and trauma, and that over 90% of the casualties of such conflicts are civilians. It is therefore good and important that in Vienna, countries agreed to work together towards a new international political declaration to stop the use of explosive weapons in populated areas. Do the UK Government support those efforts unconditionally, and if not, why not? We have to accept our own place within that. We must accept that if there is any sense that British-made bombs have caused these problems, that undermines the case that we make in our communities about the importance of British aid and helping people with disabilities. That is an inconvenient truth, but one that we must not lose from this conversation.

Thirdly and finally, there must be coherence between our international and domestic approaches. In the Government’s responses to recommendations 19, 20 and 21, they affirm that DFID will want to strengthen the access of people with disabilities to social protection in developing countries, and in some cases, agree to go further in the future. There is the challenge of that not chiming with constituents who contact me about experience at home. We of course know from the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities about some of the challenges in this country. Those are issues for the next six weeks, so I will not go any further than that, but there will be a challenge for us on the credibility of both public policy and aid policy, which is so important, if we do not demonstrate that we are practising and preaching at home the values that we believe in and hold globally. That is exceptionally important, and I would be interested to hear the Minister’s response.

I thank you, Mr Evans, for chairing the debate and hon. Members for their contributions. I thank the hon. Member for Stafford and my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby for everything that they have done, and for their leadership. We stand on their shoulders. I find it comforting to be able to say that, and we wish them nothing but the best in the future.

Draft International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (General Capital Increase) Order 2019 Draft International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (Selective Capital Increase) Order 2019 Draft International Finance Corporation (General Capital Increase) Order 2019

Alex Norris Excerpts

Monday 15th July 2019 General Committees

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am grateful for the chance to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma, and grateful to the Minister for outlining the statutory instruments before us. The Opposition do not intend to divide the Committee on this matter, but I have a series of points to raise. The Minister is always well briefed and may have the information with him, but if there are some things he does not know, perhaps he will follow up in writing. That would be much appreciated.

We seek reassurance on a number of points of serious concern relating to these two arms of the World Bank. I will talk first about impact. What independent evidence can the Minister give us on both the IBRD’s and the IFC’s impact on reducing poverty? We have concerns about the developmental impact of the World Bank’s work, as raised by its independent evaluation group, which found that the IFC in particular has in recent years experienced a downward trend in the developmental impact of its investments. IFC investments made via private equity funds are of particular concern, given that they can be opaque and difficult to track. How can we be certain that all the IFC’s investments will lead to demonstrable developmental impacts?

I was pleased to hear the Minister’s reference to gender and the positive outlook and direction being taken. I am keen to know what plans are in place to ensure the impact sought. I was also pleased to hear the Minister’s assurances regarding the shift in direction on governance. Hopefully, we will be able to tease out a bit more. The recent leadership selection exercise, which lacked a fair or competitive process, showed that we still have a long way to go in increasing the representation of borrower countries. There is a clear need across the architecture of global financial institutions for serious change in that respect. The governance of the World Bank is skewed towards the wealthiest nations. Developed countries retain the majority of shares and board seats, which means that there is an uneven distribution of voting powers, and of course the United States retains its veto power. I would be interested to hear how we will achieve the changes that the Minister outlined, and on what sort of timeline.

Tying voting powers directly to capital contributions is a problematic way to govern such an important international financial institution, so I welcome the Minister’s saying that we will move away from that, not least because the capital that the UK provides is a relatively small proportion of the bank’s funding, and large chunks of its operations are funded by loan repayments from developing countries. Surely we could go further than the reforms of recent years and de-link capital contributions and voting powers. I would be interested to hear how far we can go on that, so that we take into consideration other factors, such as population or developmental needs. Does he agree that we still have a way to go to ensure more balanced structures? What tangible changes will he be advocating through these orders and beyond?

Thirdly, on domestic resource mobilisation, as law makers we know how important collecting taxes is to a country’s development. A major impediment to raising the resources they need is tax avoidance. How will the Minister make sure the World Bank helps Governments to maximise their domestic revenues by ensuring that no investments go to companies engaging in tax avoidance or operating through non-compliant jurisdictions? Does he agree that we should ensure that all investments made by the IFC are analysed for their impact on domestic revenues?

Fourthly, I was pleased with what the Minister said about aligning the work with the Paris climate agreement, but I want to probe that a bit more. In the recent general debate on climate change and global development—a very good debate indeed, with excellent contributions from across the House and a high degree of consensus—the Government assured the House that the big multilateral banks are aligning their climate finance with the targets of the Paris agreement. However, we are deeply concerned about the bank’s continued funding of fossil fuel projects after the Paris agreement, which the shadow Chancellor raised in his speech at Labour’s International Social Forum this weekend. At that conference, the Leader of the Opposition announced Labour’s plans to stop channelling finance through the World Bank’s climate investment funds, but instead to redirect them to the UN’s green climate funds—a move that would give more direct access to national and local actors, rather than concentrating funding in a handful of multinational development banks. I would be very interested to hear the Minister’s thoughts on that idea. In additoin, how will the Government ensure that all climate finance is spent in a way that ensures local ownership? Will he set out the ways in which the World Bank is aligning its investments with the Paris agreement, and how that will be monitored?

Finally, transparency is very important to all right hon. and hon. Members, and the Department for International Development raised that issue in its multilateral spending review. Although the IBRD and the IFC scored “good” overall, both agencies’ scores for transparency were weak. In particular, the IFC has struggled with scandal. Just this month, one of its investment officers was in the press after she allegedly favoured the company in which her husband was a senior executive and which was awarded a significant part of a £2.6 billion contract that she was involved with. According to the New York Times, that conflict of interest has dragged the bank into Latin America’s biggest corruption scandal. We all agree that transparency is critical to tackling corruption, so will the Minister set out how he will ensure that the World Bank urgently improves the transparency of all its institutions?

I will leave it there. I have raised a number of issues, and I would be very grateful for the Minister’s reflections on them. If the answers are not available today, perhaps he will follow up in writing.

Forced Displacement in Africa

Alex Norris Excerpts

Thursday 4th July 2019 Westminster Hall

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Evans. Let me start by paying tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) not only for securing the debate, but for the hard work that he did, along with his staff and colleagues on the International Development Committee—let me curry some early favour by acknowledging that that includes you, Mr Evans—to produce this report on forced displacement in Africa and to hold the Government to account on one of the most important crises of our time.

I want to reflect on a few things that my hon. Friend said, because they bear repeating. He mentioned that forced displacement affects a wide range of people—the internally displaced, people in camps and people outside the country but not in camps—but the one thing they have in common is that they are vulnerable. In our drive, as he characterised it, to achieve the sustainable development goals, we will leave those people behind if we do not act to support them and help them rebuild their lives. We must acknowledge every time we have this conversation that displacement happens into the poorest countries. My hon. Friend made the point well that those countries provide an exceptional public good, but those who shoulder the greatest burden are those who are the least able to do so.

I will return to the “begging bowl” approach, but while I am reflecting on what my hon. Friend said, let me mention that I was visited yesterday by a senior colleague in a major aid organisation for a private briefing on Yemen. We talked about Yemen but, as often happens nowadays, we got on to the climate emergency. He rightly said that the climate emergency has already reached the countries we are talking about—certainly those with the very least—so the idea that we have to wait for something to happen and then run around desperately trying to get the funding to tackle it is a nonsense. Regrettably—we really should regret and reflect on this—this is the new normal, so there is no need to wait for it to happen before we act.

Everyone who spoke mentioned the role of women. My colleagues in the shadow international development team, the Leader of the Opposition and I received a delegation of Syrian women politicians, who told us about their experiences. They said in particular that they felt constantly, from the beginning to where they are today, that their roles were gendered for them. In conflict, on the road to reconstruction and everywhere in the middle, women’s roles are gendered for them: they must be peacemakers and care givers, but not leaders. My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby made a very strong case for the benefit we would get from female leadership in such situations. I hope the Minister heard that and reflects on it.

My hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton (Kate Osamor) started her speech by referring to education. When we think about humanitarian crises and displacement, we think about meeting immediate needs—ensuring that people have shelter and that their healthcare and nutrition needs are met—but education is an exceptional form of immunisation in itself. That is why we want everyone in our communities to have access to it. That was really brought to life by my hon. Friend’s example from Niger: a girl is 20 times more likely to be a teenage mother than to finish school. That really is quite something.

My hon. Friend also made a really important point about the 10 years of experience in the Lake Chad basin, where 2.2 million people have been displaced, half of them children. Incidents such as the Boko Haram abduction become massive global stories but then go away. Although Kwanye was not an abductee, her story—one of lost education and lost opportunities—is just as stark and important. I do not think I can put it better than my hon. Friend did when she said that these people need solidarity, not pity and shock. That is really important as we reflect on how we engage on an ongoing basis. Our pity and shock can be useful at times, but an ongoing, consistent, bankable, reliable sense of solidarity would be a much stronger approach.

The numbers on forced displacement are staggering. Last year, a person was displaced every two seconds, and 68.5 million people have been forced to flee their homes: for every one of us living in our beautiful country, there is a person on the move, without a home of their own. We know that those millions of people fleeing conflict face poverty, persecution and other forms of insecurity. They face incredibly perilous journeys: they can be exploited, raped or attacked on the way, just seeking safety. The majority of them are prevented from getting to a safe point where they can start a new life. Instead, they tend to get stuck in so-called gateway countries such as Libya, where they are locked up and blocked from reaching their safe final destination.

Many of the people who are trapped in a third country, unable to return home or to start a new life somewhere new, face a bleak future. Last week—this sort of thing brings it home—I met campaigners from Western Sahara, who talked about the 50,000 Sahrawi people who fled Moroccan forces in 1975. The majority ended up in refugee camps in the Tindouf province of Algeria. There are now 90,000 people in those camps, many of whom are the original 50,000. That was 45 years ago. I have been walking this planet for 35 years, so they have been there, stuck in stasis, for 10 years longer than I have been around. Time has moved on for the rest of the world—imagine the changes between 1975 and 2019: the world is a completely different place—but not for them. For them, time has stood still. They have spent whole lifetimes without enough food, water, healthcare, housing or education—the things we build our lives on.

As we know, that experience is not restricted to Western Sahara. There are far too many displaced people living a life in limbo in camps across Africa—in Kenya, Uganda, Libya and Tanzania—and beyond, in Jordan, Bangladesh and Lebanon. If we do not act, that will be the future: decades-long stays in camps for millions of people on the move. That is a real stain on our conscience.

The report does so much to keep the light shining on this issue. I am grateful that the Government agreed with many of the Committee’s recommendations—that really ought to be reflected in this discussion—but I want to draw attention to three points. First, no one can do this alone. The global compact on refugees was a huge step towards international co-operation, but if Governments on the frontline of the displacement crisis are to meet their obligations, they need the money to do it.

That brings me back to what the Committee called the “begging bowl” approach, in which Governments have to ask for more every time to help them meet a new challenge. Will the Minister consider again the Committee’s recommendation to set up, with our international partners, new grants and funding mechanisms that would enable long-term, sustainable financing of international responses—again, solidarity rather than shock? Can she tell us any more about how the Government intend to approach the global refugee forum in December and the mooted UN high-level panel on internal displacement to keep up the momentum towards international solutions?

Secondly, DFID can and ought to keep raising the technical standards on international refugee responses. The UK has real influence in the UNHCR, which is a good thing, and we should continue to drive organisational reform there. Refugees must be able to get better information about what is happening in the homes they fled, especially in terms of safety, before they decide whether to go back. When voluntary return is not possible, refugees ought to be offered routes to integrate locally rather than staying indefinitely detained and excluded. I hope the Minister will commit to learning quickly some of the lessons—good and bad—from Jordan, Ethiopia and Bangladesh on voluntary returns and local integration, and to doing more in those areas.

Thirdly, I want to touch on what my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby and the Committee characterised as the “practise what we preach” approach, which is about honouring our own obligations here in the UK. The Committee made clear, reasonable and powerful recommendations, for which we heard support in the debate, in particular about easing the restrictions on asylum seekers’ right to work in the UK. Prior to taking up this role, I was on the Select Committee on Home Affairs, and that is something we recommended. We should also increase resettlement numbers to 10,000 annually, as recommended by the UNHCR, with a quarter of those places reserved for refugees from sub-Saharan Africa; and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton mentioned, put in place a coherent cross-Government strategy.

There is pressure on global north democracies to try to keep the migration crisis away—out of sight and out of mind—because it is politically difficult. It was politically difficult for generations of colleagues before us. I hope that perhaps in my generation we might get towards having a proper, sensible and honest conversation with our voters about it.

The sticking-plaster approaches of trying to incentivise potential migrants to stay at home or funding coastguards to shut down the Mediterranean will not work. There are those who would push us towards hoping that other countries will do it, without us doing so ourselves, but that will not work. When other countries pander to the far right, we see what that means: people drowning in the Mediterranean; the captain of Sea-Watch 3, Carola Rackete, arrested in Lampedusa because her crew put saving lives before politics; choosing to build walls and put children in cages; and allowing others to drown in the Rio Grande.

We would all reflect on those things and say, “Never here,” but we must understand that no one gets there in one leap. It starts with “Go home” immigration vans, with locking up people who have done nothing but be migrants to this country, and with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender migrants being sent home to face persecution. If we go on that journey, we lose our claim to be part of the solution and become part of the problem. That is what the Government and Parliament must consider: what side of history will we be on? Will we be part of the solution, or will we contribute to the problem?

I look forward to the Minister’s response. I again thank hon. Members for their contributions, and my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby for securing the debate.

Department for International Development

Alex Norris Excerpts

Monday 1st July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

I have thoroughly enjoyed the last couple of hours. I think this has been a high-quality debate. Too often, when it comes to DFID, we talk about things in the deficit—whether it is about the 0.7%, the existence of the Department in and of itself, or a particular aid project that has not gone very well—so it is very nice to have had the chance to listen to hon. and right hon. colleagues talk about the positives in DFID and the reasons to be proud of it. I commend the hon. Member for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson) for his leadership in that and for the way in which he set the tone. He started by saying that he feels lucky to be born in this country. I know that he, like me, loves his country and that he, like me, is a patriot, but he, like me, looks at the things that we have and wants that for others, too. That was the right tone to set. He talked about not only doing the right things ourselves, but the permission that it gives others when we do so. That was an important point to make.

The hon. Gentleman was followed by two towering figures in this field: my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) and the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell). My hon. Friend talked about those of us who are passionate about this having an added responsibility to justify value for money. Interestingly, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) made a similar point, but came at it in a different way. It shows that, across this place, we often start in different places, but arrive at similar conclusions. The right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield made an articulate defence of a separate but co-ordinated DFID, to which I am sure we will refer.

When the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) rose to speak, I hoped that he would reference Malawi and he did not disappoint. When I was in Lilongwe last year, people locally spoke positively about that proud connection that they have with Scotland. My take-away phrase of the debate came in an intervention from the hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke) when he said that we should sell the principle of aid—sell it like it could go tomorrow. That was a call to action, which, again, I will come back to.

My two near neighbours, the hon. Members for Mid Derbyshire (Mrs Latham) and for Erewash (Maggie Throup), made characteristically articulate points. The hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire made some points on whistleblowing and I liked what the hon. Member for Erewash said about the Global Fund. On Wednesday, I was at an event with the Minister of State, Department for International Development, the right hon. Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison), whom I shadow, talking about the need to make an early decision on the Global Fund. I have to say that it felt like it was more in hope than expectation, but he had a little twinkle in his eye and now we know why.

The hon. Member for Stirling (Stephen Kerr) mentioned his strongly held view that enterprise and trade are the way forward for development and we agree with that, but what we would say, which is why we are so focused on public services, is that without decent education for boys and girls, without reliable healthcare, and without access to good nutrition, people will not be able to enter those jobs. Nevertheless, that was an important point to make.

We should be proud that the UK is one of the biggest aid donors in the world, and one of only five countries to have met the UN target of 0.7% of national income on overseas aid. In the two decades since the Labour Government established the Department for International Development as a stand-alone independent Government Department, DFID has become a global leader in its field. Every year, it spends UK aid in ways that make life-changing, material differences to people’s lives across the world. DFID has helped some of the world’s poorest people to access health and education services. It has provided humanitarian aid in times of crisis and led the way in putting gender equality at the heart of international development work. We know that spending money in this way is the right thing to do and that, as one of the world’s wealthiest countries, we must play our part in creating a fairer world. We also know that, as a country that has sometimes contributed to some of the inequalities that we see today, that duty is made all the stronger. So it is right that we set aside a fraction of our wealth to help to bring about a world where humans are all granted basic dignities such as health, education and nutrition. The UK public should be proud of the important poverty reduction work that our money has supported in recent decades.

The tone of the debate was so positive that, in trying to measure my remarks, I thought that I had better be careful that I did not push my points too hard. The right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield was right in saying that it is important to be reflective and to be critical where necessary. So that is the spirit in which I go into the next section of my speech. We should be worried about, and act on the steady decline in the proportion of the ODA budget going to DFID. It is now at one quarter, as we have heard, which weakens the Department and weakens our ability to scrutinise it. We have heard that the front runner to be the next Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson), has been on record about dismantling the Department altogether; it is not beyond the pale—far from it. Instead of maintaining an independent DFID, he has suggested repurposing the aid budget so that it would no longer be directed towards poverty reduction; the hon. Member for Dundee West (Chris Law) referred to that. Members should not take this just from me. Just last week, the Secretary of State told the Select Committee that there will be, at the very least, a reorganisation in which there would remain a Department and a Secretary of State, but with more influence perhaps exercised by the Foreign Secretary. That is what is to come, but there are challenges now on which we should reflect. I will be interested to hear the Minister’s views on that.

In the past, we have had Members leading the Department who do not actually believe in it themselves. The former Secretary of State for International Development was reported as saying that the aid budget is unsustainable—the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) drove a coach and horses through that idea very effectively indeed. Her predecessor was on record as saying that she did not believe in an independent DFID. It does feel slightly strange sometimes to defend from the Opposition Benches Government Departments from Government Ministers. That seems a little tangled up. There have been lots of ten-minute rule Bills from Government Members on the issue of folding the Department or cutting and repurposing the aid budget. Clearly, those are disastrous ideas. Folding DFID into the FCO or any other Department would be catastrophic for our country’s aid programme because it is only DFID that has that explicit sole purpose of achieving poverty reduction overseas. To care about that is to care about an independent DFID. Any such merger would undermine that.

The International Development Committee, under my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby, insisted that all ODA must be directed primarily at reducing poverty, rather than

“being used as a slush fund to pay for developing the UK’s diplomatic, trade or national security interests”.

It goes further, recommending that the Secretary of State should have the ultimate oversight of the UK’s ODA and that the Department should have the final sign-off. Let me take this opportunity to state clearly on the record that Labour will oppose any attempts to merge, shut down or dissolve the Department for International Development. Furthermore, we believe there should be a freeze on the proportion of ODA being spent outside DFID and we of course stand by the commitment to maintain 0.7% of GNI as a minimum spend for our aid programme.

That is not to say that, within that, there is not scope for making changes. Too often, aid is still prioritising helping UK companies to enter overseas markets, or security projects that have actually endangered people and undermined human rights. There is an increasing and worrying trend of aid being spent in ways that are not about poverty reduction—we heard that from a number of hon. Members. This is a downward spiral—the opposite of a virtuous circle—because these are the discreditable projects on which the media pick up, which further undermines confidence in the budget.

It is clear that anyone who wants this country to play its part in international development must stand ready to defend the Department and the budget, as if they could go tomorrow—that is a good way to think about it—and I am ready to do that. I am proud that Labour is an internationalist party that believes in global solidarity. We must never turn our backs on problems, especially when sometimes we have helped to make them. We must step up and take action to make the world a fairer place. The least we can do is spend a fraction—less than a penny in each pound—of the country’s income on this.

Of course, aid alone will not solve the world’s problems, as many hon. Members have said. There are many other things we can do on the international stage to help to address global poverty fully. The Opposition’s approach is to commit to dealing with the root causes of poverty, and to be prepared to rewrite trade policies, put an end to debt burdens and clamp down on corporate tax avoidance, all of which are vital for creating a more global economy.

I will finish with four questions for the Minister, on which I hope she can give some guarantees. First, does she agree that, now that we are being told by former Foreign Secretaries and Tory leadership contenders that there is £26 billion of so-called headroom, there is no possible excuse for abandoning our commitment to 0.7%? Secondly, will she commit to standing up to any attempt to undermine our country’s commitment to that target, wherever such attacks come from, including her own Benches? Thirdly, does she agree that the best way to manage this spending is through a dedicated Department for International Development standing on an independent footing? Finally, will she commit to ending the misuse of aid as a slush fund for other Departments’ priorities and as a means of expanding commercial interests overseas, and instead commit to focusing all aid spending on its core objective of poverty reduction?

This has been an excellent debate. We should all be very proud of the work that we have talked about. We must now come together to make it even better.

Syria: Civilians in Idlib

Alex Norris Excerpts

Tuesday 18th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) for asking this urgent question. I feel she spoke for the whole House when she spoke of Jo Cox at the beginning of her speech, and I thank the Minister for his response.

Once again we find ourselves here in this place shocked and appalled at the threat to hundreds of thousands of civilians in Syria. We had Aleppo, we had Raqqa, we had Ghouta, and now today it is Idlib: homes and livelihoods destroyed; civilians and children fleeing and dying; and, yet again, hospitals bombed and deliberately targeted.

Three years on from UN Security Council resolution 2286, medical facilities are still being hit in Syria—an unthinkable 29 hospitals in the past six weeks according to some reports. Amnesty International says these attacks targeting hospitals constitute “crimes against humanity”. The International Rescue Committee says that these attacks continue to happen with “absolute impunity”. This is shocking and reprehensible; even wars are supposed to have rules.

What steps is the Minister taking with our international partners to ensure that these appalling attacks on health facilities do not go by with impunity and, as he says, that these people are brought to book? Can the Minister tell us more about the UK’s promised protection of civilians strategy—exactly when it will be delivered and whether it will be accompanied by a clear framework for accountability and implementation?

It is absolutely necessary that we urgently get all sides around a table to find a peaceful, political resolution to this horrific conflict. That is the only thing that will bring the carnage in Idlib to an end. That is the only thing that will protect the lives of those health workers still operating in Idlib and the civilians they are working to save. So what is the Minister doing to realise this? That peace must be achieved, and let me end by echoing the words of the president of Médecins Sans Frontières who put it so simply when she called on all warring parties to:

“Stop bombing hospitals. Stop bombing health workers. Stop bombing patients.”

[Dr Murrison]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his remarks and questions. It is important that we work with international partners to apply pressure to those who are responsible. He will be well aware of the difficulty of working with the regime in Damascus and its supporters, but the Sochi agreement at the end of last year held out such promise. Those were baby steps, perhaps, but it was the start of a process that might have brought some sense to this troubled region. I very much regret that Russia has decided to take the steps that it has and I prevail on it, even now, to think about its responsibilities that it signed up to with Turkey at Sochi.

It is important that the UN continues to meet in emergency session. I look forward to its deliberations this afternoon and we will take a full part in them. Ultimately, UN Security Council resolution 2254 has to be applied. That is the only way that we can restore peace and equanimity to this very troubled part of the world.

World TB Day

Alex Norris Excerpts

Wednesday 27th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I, too, thank the right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) for not only securing the debate, but providing me with my first opportunity to respond from the Front Bench. He is very passionate about this topic, and that passion has been reflected in the contributions of every Member this afternoon.

Last week, along with many colleagues present in the Chamber, I attended an event in Speaker’s House on ending tuberculosis, where I was deeply moved by the impassioned words of Emily Wise, a doctor who had been on the front line of the battle against TB, working with Médecins Sans Frontières in Uzbekistan. She spoke of her trauma as she watched a patient die, and her anger at the fact that, as a doctor, she was unable to save her. The patient did not die for medical reasons; she did not die because Emily did not know how to save her, or because TB is incurable. Let me repeat Emily’s professional diagnosis of why her patient died. She said:

“In this modern age, all deaths from TB boil down to a lack of commitment from the international political community and the pharmaceutical industry to address this disease.”

Her message is clear: as politicians, we must do more. We have to step up to the challenge of ending the world’s deadliest infectious disease, and it is entirely within our reach to do so.

Sunday marked World TB Day: an occasion to remind ourselves of where we are in the fight to end TB. It has been curable for more than 50 years, yet in 2017 it killed 1.6 million people, and there were 10 million new infections, of which 3.6 million were never officially diagnosed or treated. It is a disease of inequality, with the poorest most at risk, and 95% of the deaths occur in low and middle-income countries. Here at home, the poorest 10% of people are at a seven times higher risk of contracting TB. According to the World Health Organisation, at the current rate of progress we will fail to reach the global goal of ending TB by 2030.

I am hopeful that the world might be beginning to wake up to that severe injustice. As we heard, last September the first UN high-level meeting on TB took place. Governments committed to significant investment for programmes and research. The meeting was clearly a step in the right direction, but we must now accelerate progress. We know that in order to effectively diagnose and treat TB, countries need a strong public health system. My hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle) made that point very strongly.

In the UK, 81% of people who contract TB fully recover, thanks to our wonderful national health service. Does the Minister agree that the Department for International Development ought to focus on building strong public services, so that people’s right to access healthcare is not based on their ability to pay? Of course, getting people the treatment that they need also requires international funding. That is why we must ensure that the Global Fund is fully resourced and I, too, encourage the Government to make a commitment to increase the UK’s contribution to it.

Finally, let me address the issue of access to medicines. In all countries, there are now TB strains that are resistant to at least some of the treatments available. In recent years, new, highly effective medicines for multi-drug-resistant TB have been approved, but they are reaching only 5% of the people who need them. Among the barriers to access, affordability is a major concern—[Interruption.] Not now, please.

That lack of affordability is despite huge public investment from the UK and other sources into one of the drugs: bedaquiline. We have a crisis in the research and development system for medicines. I therefore ask the Minister whether DFID will commit to working with other Government Departments, and partners globally, to revisit the system of exclusive intellectual property rights that prevents drugs from getting to those who need them the most.

Parliamentarians last discussed TB nine months ago. It seems that not an awful lot has changed. I hope that when we are next together, we can reflect on more progress.

Jammu and Kashmir

Alex Norris Excerpts

Wednesday 27th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mark Field]

Discussions about the current issue have taken place at the UN with our head of mission. If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, rather than giving a glib and quick answer here, I will write to him in detail about precisely what has happened in recent months.

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

Members of the Kashmir diaspora make an extraordinary contribution across our communities, nowhere more so than in Nottingham. They will understand, as I do, the Minister’s reluctance to pick a side, as he puts it, but will he be absolutely clear with the House and make a solemn commitment that when it comes to working through international organisations—especially the UN —when it comes to human rights and when it comes to humanitarian aid, the British Government will not be found wanting?

[Mark Field]

I hope the hon. Gentleman will feel reassured that that is very much the British Government’s approach. It is important that we work together on this, not just in the context of the urgent question but in the context of APPGs. I hope that we can work across Parliament, because we will have an even stronger voice if we speak as one. There will of course be disagreements at the margins, but if we can speak as one for Kashmir and Kashmiri people, our voice will be all the more effective in dealing with our Indian and Pakistani counterparts.

Future of DFID

Alex Norris Excerpts

Wednesday 27th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Mr Dhesi]

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. We must ensure that aid reaches those who need it most and that it is not siphoned away by corrupt individuals in Governments, whether in Africa or in other parts of the world.

DFID is respected and admired in all the places where it operates. Wherever the UK aid logo appears, it shows the world how much the British public care. Since the passage of the International Development Act 2002, all overseas aid must be spent with the explicit purpose of reducing global poverty. That is an important piece of legislation, because it makes clear the distinction between aid and trade: one is not a quid pro quo for the other. The Pergau dam scandal showed that some aid in the 1980s and 1990s was being linked to trade deals. In that instance, despite clear objections from civil servants, there was a link between British aid for building the dam and British arms sales to Malaysia.

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend mentions a very troubling incident and he will notice echoes of that today, with renewed calls for our aid budget to mirror trade interests. Does he agree that common global interests are what matter, rather than narrow self-interest?

[Mr Dhesi]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Indeed, he may be telepathic, because I was just about to mention that, but I concur fully with his view.

The Pergau dam affair was declared unlawful in a landmark court case in 1994. More recently, as my hon. Friend says, fears have been raised that our aid budget has not focused solely on poverty reduction. An article in The Guardian revealed that charities such as Oxfam, Save the Children and ActionAid were deeply concerned that some of the funds were used by

“classing politically convenient projects as aid,”

rather than exclusively helping the most vulnerable. We must of course contribute vital overseas aid owing to our obligations as one the wealthiest nations in the world. I am sure that the Minister will offer warm and emollient words. She will no doubt tell us of the commitment to DFID as a Department and that the 0.7% target remains in place.

At this point, it is pertinent to pay tribute to both the former Liberal Democrat MP Michael Moore, for introducing a private Member’s Bill to enshrine the 0.7% target in law, and the then Government for allowing it to become law. We should welcome the commitment in the 2017 Conservative manifesto to maintaining that 0.7% commitment, which I am sure the Minister will mention in her speech.

Why exactly should we be concerned about DFID’s future? The tectonic plates of politics have shifted in recent months and the voices that considered overseas aid a waste of money have become louder and more mainstream within the governing party—the critics are moving from the fringe to centre stage. The former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel), seemed more aligned with the TaxPayers Alliance than with the global anti-poverty movement. She resigned after running errands for the FCO in Israel rather than running her own Department.

The previous Foreign Secretary, the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson), called the establishment of DFID in 1997 a “colossal mistake”.

This month, he endorsed a report by the Henry Jackson Society that calls for a dilution of DFID’s role in alleviating poverty, with a diversion towards broader international policies such as peacekeeping. He told the BBC’s “Today” programme:

“We could make sure that 0.7 % is spent more in line with Britain’s political commercial and diplomatic interests.”

Commercial interests? What could he possibly mean by that?

My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden) has made it clear that he believes this is the opening act in a move to downgrade DFID and to slash overseas aid. It is hard to disagree that that is the Secretary of State’s secret agenda.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alex Norris Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

Soft power can be very effective in places where we have a traditional connection, such as Cameroon. Constituents have recently visited me concerned about the ongoing human rights crisis there. Will a Minister meet me and my campaigners to see what more we can do?

[Mr Hunt]

The Minister for Africa is not here, but I am delighted to say in her absence that she would be delighted to meet the hon. Gentleman.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alex Norris Excerpts

Tuesday 15th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Alistair Burt]

No, I do not believe that that can possibly be the case. If the right hon. Lady would write with the specific detail of an allegation, I will look at it, but I do not believe that it is the case.

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

18. That specific detail is available in the report by the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy and Reprieve that was referenced earlier. It says that British-funded institutions and trained-by-Britain organisations have indeed covered up this sort of behaviour. Can we have an assurance from the Dispatch Box that that report is being looked at and that a formal response will come to Members?

[Alistair Burt]

Yes, I will. As I indicated earlier, the purpose of our engagement with Bahrain is to deal sometimes with difficult practices that have been there in the past in order to change them and improve them, but I think a specific allegation of British involvement and cover-up would not be right.