Tackling Infectious Diseases

Catherine West Excerpts

Thursday 20th April 2017 Commons Chamber

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

I welcome the opportunity to reply to this debate on behalf of the Opposition. The debate was secured by my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma). I congratulate him and the hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) on their excellent work in this area. I declare an interest: my partner works in the NHS and higher education sector in research and diagnosis of neglected tropical diseases.

I will begin by addressing the Department for International Development’s capacity for research and development to tackle infectious diseases, before turning to some of the international opportunities that lie ahead. The Labour party has a proud history of supporting international development. It created DFID and worked to bring development issues up the political agenda. We supported the Bill that enshrined our commitment to spending 0.7% of our gross national income on official development assistance, and I am pleased that, to date, the Government have adhered to that.

Earlier this month, Government figures projected that health would be the biggest spend of ODA over 2017 and 2018. That is the correct thing to do, as health is a public good and a building block of sustainable democracies and strong economies that work for all. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall, said, infectious diseases such as HIV, TB, malaria and neglected tropical diseases are all related to poverty and are often associated with stigma. Tackling them should be at the heart of our investment in global health. After all, the primary aim of ODA is poverty reduction.

Infectious diseases do not respect borders. In our increasingly globalised world, we must take steps, domestically and internationally, to address epidemics of infectious disease. That makes sense in the interests of global health security, too. Within the commitment to spend 0.7%, the Government have pledged to spend around 3% of the total on research and development. In last October’s DFID research review, it was stated that this commitment, together with cross-Government investment in the Ross fund, would equate to £390 million over four years.

The Secretary of State has identified tackling infectious disease as one of the global challenges that her Department aims to address, but this challenge requires not only revenue investments in healthcare programmes, but sustained investment in research and development to ensure that we have the right tools to take on the fight.

We have heard today about the inadequacy of current treatments, diagnostics and prevention strategies, and we are certainly not on course to meet the third global goal for sustainable development—to end epidemics of the major global infectious diseases by 2030. It specifically highlights the threat of HIV, TB, malaria and the neglected tropical diseases.

I have four questions for the Minister. First, will the Minister provide the House with a breakdown of resources allocated to infectious disease research and development? I hope that he will give us some figures today. The Ross fund, which is the £1 billion portfolio of investments mentioned in today’s debate and announced in 2016, is jointly administered by DFID and the Department of Health. The fund was established to invest in research and development

“for drugs, vaccines, diagnostics and treatments to combat the most serious infectious diseases in developing countries”.

That Government commitment is correct, but there has been a lack of transparency on how exactly the fund is to be allocated, and as of last night, the website portal was still not live, and we are well into 2017.

Secondly, will the Minister provide the House with details of how the fund will be used to achieve its aim of combating the world’s deadliest infectious diseases, namely HIV, TB and malaria? We want the details.

Members have mentioned product development partnerships, of which DFID has been a long-standing supporter under Governments of different political persuasions. These not-for-profit partnerships have proved to be a useful vehicle for bolstering DFID’s research capacity; for gaining an understanding of the epidemics in communities most at risk; and for building research capacity in developing countries. With that in mind, may I pose my third question to the Minister? Can he reassure the House that DFID will continue to support product development partnerships and show the international leadership required to bring other donors back to the table and ensure that our investments to date are not lost? If my research is correct, we have lost some other donors to the programme. The question from the Labour Benches is: what are the Government doing to regain the leadership on that crucial question?

A vaccine for malaria has completed clinical trials and is due to be piloted in sub-Saharan Africa soon, but HIV is as yet without a vaccine, and although we might think that we are adequately protected from tuberculosis by our BCG—bacillus Calmette-Guérin—that vaccine actually dates back to the 1920s and is only moderately effective in preventing TB in young children, and it does not adequately protect adolescents and adults. We know that many people who begin courses of TB treatment in third-world countries do not complete them because of the cost. My fourth and final question is therefore this: will the Minister confirm that DFID will continue to support vaccine development in particular?

Let me turn to opportunities for international collaboration. Members have mentioned access to medicines. The recent report by the UN Secretary-General’s high-level panel called for the cost of research and development to be delinked from the price charged for medicines, and for pharmaceutical companies to reveal the details of their spending on research and development, marketing and drug promotion. That added layer of transparency would help to ensure fairness in drug pricing and assist international agencies more effectively to support drug and vaccine deployment in countries where they are needed.

The final, and perhaps most pertinent, issue that I wish to raise is drug resistance. We have talked at length about antimicrobial resistance, so I will not repeat what other Members have said. I hope that the Minister will speak about Lord O’Neill’s report and his response to it.

In conclusion, my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall began today’s excellent debate by talking about the failure to address a number of these issues—not just antimicrobial resistance but TB, malaria and other tropical diseases. We have heard about the excellent work done by our all-party parliamentary groups. We have heard the commitment, at least across the Back Benches, to the 0.7% commitment on overseas development aid. I can certainly give an assurance on behalf of the Labour party on that front. I look forward to hearing the Minister respond to my four questions and share his knowledge—if he has any yet—of the manifesto commitment that his party will be putting forward in a few short weeks.

Foreign Aid Expenditure

Catherine West Excerpts

Monday 13th June 2016 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Timms]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about that. During those campaigns, I remember that a Treasury Minister turned up to work one morning to find the Treasury surrounded by campaigners, arm in arm all the way around the building. They inundated the Treasury with postcards with £1 coins sellotaped to the back of them, one of which we worked out had been sent in by Gordon Brown’s mother. The organisers of the two campaigns—Jubilee 2000 and Make Poverty History—estimated that about 80% of the people who supported the campaigns and did those things were from the Churches. That is the reason for this cross-party consensus. It is a remarkable example. People sometimes say that the Churches never achieve much anymore; in this instance, the Churches achieved a huge amount, and it is important to recognise the source and strength of the existing consensus.

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

My right hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does he agree that in the same way as Make Poverty History was a huge issue then, climate change is a huge issue now? Value-for-money programmes in Bangladesh, such as those to do with flooding, have an enormous impact. They can prevent not only flooding, but famine, helping with unwanted migration and so on—issues we need to look at. Even terrorism can be linked to the failure to address climate change.

Sustainable Development Goals

Catherine West Excerpts

Thursday 10th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[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.

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[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.

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[Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate the hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Stephen Phillips) on securing the debate and on his excellent speech, with which I concur. I also thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting today’s debate.

The International Development Committee has decided to make this subject the first area in a major inquiry during this Parliament into the sustainable development goals and their implementation. As the hon. and learned Gentleman said, the millennium development goals achieved fantastic results. The level of extreme poverty has halved globally over the last two decades, the number of out-of-school children of primary school age has fallen by almost half since 2000 and the maternal mortality ratio has declined by 45% worldwide.

The sustainable development goals aim to offer an innovative approach to tackling the underlying causes of the challenges we face today. This week the International Development Committee heard from a number of witnesses about the importance of a different approach. Melissa Leach from the Institute of Development Studies spoke of “synergies” and the fact that great strides can be taken on multiple connected issues. In other words, this work cannot be left to the Department for International Development alone. We must take a cross-governmental approach.

The aim of goal 9 is to build

“resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialisation and foster innovation”.

Clearly, DFID needs to work with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and other Departments to take that forward. Goal 7 talks about ensuring

“access to affordable, reliable, sustainable…energy for all”.

DFID will need to work with the Department of Energy and Climate Change to take that forward. As the hon. and learned Gentleman said, the way in which we finance the goals will be critical, and we will need buy-in from the Treasury as well as from DFID.

I wish to focus on three areas: fragile states, education and data. There is a distinct challenge for people living in countries affected by conflict which is not addressed explicitly in the sustainable development goals. As David Miliband said yesterday, we cannot combat global poverty without a plan to support the people who face unique problems. Fragile states such as Somalia and Afghanistan account for 43% of people living below the poverty line, and every indication is that that will rise to as much as two thirds by 2030, and neither the millennium development goals nor the SDGs address that problem explicitly.

The International Rescue Committee has suggested that we should introduce concrete targets for supporting those in extreme poverty in conflict areas. For example, we could have the goal that all children in conflict settings have the opportunity of a safe education by 2030. We could adopt similar goals for fragile states in healthcare, violence against women and girls, and other areas. I ask the Government to consider taking that idea forward.

As the hon. and learned Gentleman said, a theme of the sustainable development goals is that no one should be left behind. The greater focus on inequality as well as poverty is important, as is addressing inequality both within and between nations. Seven out of 10 people live in countries where the gap between the rich and the poor is greater now than it was 30 years ago. We know from the evidence from our own country, as well as from other parts of the world, that rising inequality has an impact on healthcare and other life chances.

One of the most important ways that we can tackle both inequality and poverty is to focus on education. I praise the Department for International Development for the fantastic work that it does on education. I am talking here about the work on girls’ education, and the development of the No Lost Generation initiative, which has helped to highlight the education needs of child refugees from Syria. I hope that education will remain at the top of the agenda during our response to the current crisis. We know the difference that investment in education makes in our own country, as well as in the poorest countries in the world. We need to look at increasing the proportion of DFID spend that goes towards education projects.

[Catherine West]

May I say how much progress the hon. Gentleman has already made in his new role?

On the issue of investment in education or in anything else related to development, how much will that be undermined by spending some of DFID’s budget domestically? The Minister might want to refer to this later. Is there any sense of what might be cut from the development budget to make up for domestic issues that might emerge as a result of the refugee crisis?

[Stephen Twigg]

I was reassured yesterday by an answer the Secretary of State gave me on that precise point. We have not seen a shift in the Government’s definition of official development assistance. It has always been the case that the first-year costs of resettling refugees can come from ODA, and provided that that has not changed, I am reassured, but that will almost certainly be one of the items that the Select Committee considers as part of our immediate inquiry into the refugee crisis.

The SDGs have extended the scope of our commitment to secondary and tertiary education, and that is welcome. Indeed there is evidence that bolstering secondary and tertiary education can benefit primary education by developing a new generation of teachers and educational institutions. With regard to higher education, there is an important opportunity for the UK to take the lead. We can work with our universities to help develop higher education in the poorest countries in the world. We have real excellence in this area and could benefit from sharing our expertise with others. I urge the Minister and his Department to work with colleagues in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the university sector to take that matter forward.

In evidence this week, Jamie Drummond, from the organisation ONE, spoke of a data crisis that needed solving. We need to improve the quality of data on those who are being left behind around the world. He told us that around a third of births in the world are not registered and that around two thirds of the causes of death in the world are not registered. Most data points for extreme poverty in developing countries are, on average, around a decade out of date. We must improve our data, so that we make decisions that are as effective as possible. This country has huge expertise in statistics and data analytics in Cambridge and London. I urge the Minister to look at ways in which we can share that expertise to build the knowledge base and institutions in the poorest countries to improve our contribution in this area.

At the turn of the millennium, the world made a commitment to tackle some of the great scourges of our time. It is right to say that we have made important progress in that regard. I agree with the hon. and learned Gentleman that we can be proud that our country has achieved the 0.7% target, and we should challenge others, including our European partners, to do the same. The summit in New York later this month is an important milestone. The goals matter, but what matters more is effective implementation. This House can play an important role in ensuring that that happens.

Humanitarian Crisis in the Mediterranean and Europe

Catherine West Excerpts

Wednesday 9th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson), who began and ended his speech with a call for unity, reminding Members that we have heard some powerful speeches about this desperate situation and that even though we, sitting in this Chamber today, cannot solve this problem, it is critical that we discuss it as often as we can.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Moray (Angus Robertson) on leading this debate and congratulate the Scottish National party on reminding the House over the past few months of the very slow progress that has been made on the Syrian resettlement programme. I offer a mea culpa from me and the Home Affairs Committee, because we have not monitored as we should have done, but we will do so in future, as in order to make progress on resettlement we need to know that the process is actually working. I also commend my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern), because many months ago she initiated an Adjournment debate about the Mediterranean crisis.

Two years ago, the Select Committee visited the border between Turkey and Greece, where we saw for ourselves that 100,000 people were crossing the border every year. The real organisation and institution that has failed the refugees is not this House or this Government, but the European Union, and I say that as one of its great supporters. The failure of the EU to put together a strategy over the past few years to deal with an inevitable crisis is a very serious indictment of that organisation. Although we have had many speeches from Mr Juncker and others in the last few weeks, if they had acted sooner we would all have been better prepared. Greece and Italy have been asking for support for many years. Greece has been saying that it needs additional financial support. Those refugees who cross from Turkey to Faliraki in Greece were allowed to stay there for only six months. They then travelled to Athens and they headed to northern Europe. Some 92% of those who cross into Italy come from the failed state of Libya, and the Italians have been asking for support over the last year but it has never been forthcoming. Now it is a crisis for the whole of the EU.

It is right that we should congratulate the Prime Minister and the Government on announcing that we will take 20,000 refugees. I am not convinced that the timescale is appropriate to the crisis, and that is why yesterday the Home Affairs Committee—the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins) was also present—pressed the Minister for Immigration for a target for each year. He was unable to give us a target, and I think that is wrong. We need to make sure that we hold the Government to account, not because we do not trust them to deliver on the 20,000 in five years, but because Ministers’ officials will understand the seriousness of the situation only if we have constant scrutiny and a desire to make things work. If we can have a net migration target, I do not see why we cannot have a target for the number of refugees to enter this year. That can be done and is deliverable, and if the Minister puts his mind to it at his weekly meetings with his directors general he can make sure that the target is implemented. What better way to convince the House of the sincerity of the Government’s pledge—the Prime Minister has been very sincere—than to come back before the House at the end of this year and give us a figure that we can all be very proud of? It would be easy to do that, and I hope that the Government will do so.

The second issue I am concerned about is the fact that the resettlement of the Syrian refugees will be led by Cabinet Ministers who are already very busy. I welcome the committee that has been set up under the joint chairmanship of the Home Secretary and the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, but what we need is a proper resettlement board. We saw that for ourselves in Leicester when Idi Amin expelled the Ugandan Asians. Without the structure of a resettlement board—independent of Whitehall but of course drawing its authority from Parliament and the Government and necessarily getting resources from the Government—to deal with the people who come here, we will have many problems in dealing with the resettlement of Syrian refugees.

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

On my right hon. Friend’s point about organisation, as a former council leader I know that council leaders have so much on their minds at the moment and that dumping this in their laps would be completely the wrong thing to do. We also know about the important interface with the NHS, especially with counselling services. Demand for those services is huge at the moment, and I am particularly worried about the influx of non-English speakers—in the Leicester situation, many of the arrivals spoke English. I am also worried about specialist counselling services for people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

[Keith Vaz]

We all share those worries, and that is why it is important that a proper structure is created.

My final point is about north Africa and how we deal with it. I have just come back from Tunisia, where I visited the hotel at which 38 British citizens were sadly murdered. I had meetings with Tunisian Ministers about how they were dealing with the migration crisis. They were doing well. They were showing great humanitarian support and deploying their navy to ensure that the people traffickers in their waters were dealt with, and economic migrants were returned to their countries humanely. We should compare that with Tunisia’s neighbour, Libya, where there is no control and the criminal gangs are operating.

I know that the Minister for Immigration is focused on what is happening in Europol, and we need to give it more resources. The Secretary of State for International Development talked about the taskforce that has been set up, but it has not been set up yet—it will be set up by November. It will be based in Sicily and will involve the National Crime Agency and other organisations. Europol is the only organisation that can deal with all the countries of the European Union and bring to the table expertise in dealing with criminal gangs, but it has not been given any additional resources for that task. I hope that the Minister for Immigration or the Home Secretary will make the point at the meeting next week about the importance of supporting that organisation. Unfortunately, Frontex has been a bit of a failure in dealing with those issues—we cannot of course be in Frontex formally because we are not in Schengen—and has not alerted others to the problems caused by the migration crisis.

We need to make sure that something is done to deal with the criminal gangs. The Prime Minister and others are keen not to send messages to the people traffickers by accepting people who have already arrived in the European Union, and I understand that. I understand why recruitment has to be direct from the camps, but there will be exceptional cases, such as Syrian refugees who have made it all the way to Calais—as the House knows, the mayor of Calais appeared before my Committee yesterday. To expect them to go all the way back to the camps in order to come to the United Kingdom would be unfair. I accept the general principle—once we announce we will take people from everywhere, the traffickers will take €10,000 from people to get them across the Mediterranean—but we need to be able to make exceptions for exceptional cases. We need to address that lack of flexibility.

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[Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)]

I see Conservative Members looking irritated, confused even, by the criticism from Opposition Members. I understand that. We see things a little differently. They believe they are being philanthropic, charitable even, and we believe they are simply fulfilling a moral obligation. They come from a political ideology that says individuals should be encouraged to keep as much as possible of the material goods they gather. We believe we should share those material goods when we have them with those who do not. It is shades of grey, of course. Many of us on these Benches probably do not share as much as we say we want to; and of course Government Members do believe in some wealth distribution, otherwise we would have no welfare state—such as it is—no NHS and no public schooling.

The fundamental difference, however, is that Conservative Members see a generous Government who were the first to meet the UN target on overseas aid and who on Monday offered refuge to an additional 20,000 people. Credit where credit is due, as others as have said. The former is an achievement of which they should be proud, with the caveat mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady), and the latter means that we will indeed welcome 20,000 men, women and children who, I expect, will be forever glad of that decision. It is much better than where we were a few days ago.

The trouble for those of us who offer criticism is partly the number of refugees. After all, Germany can take 800,000, which is 40 times what we are prepared to take. Germany is not 40 times our size, and, to my knowledge, it is not 40 times richer. It is more about attitude. Had it not been for the public outcry and the political pressure, the clear indication was that this Government had no intention of taking anywhere near that number.

[Catherine West]

I am not sure if the hon. Lady is aware that there will be a national day of action in London this Saturday. I am sure many colleagues will not necessarily be in London, but it will add voice. It is being organised by a constituent of mine, Ros Ereira. I hope that others will be able to join in, or at least spread the word by tweets and so on, so we can do a bit more awareness raising on the importance of this crucial issue.

[Anne McLaughlin]

I think I have tweeted about that. There is also one in Glasgow and one in Edinburgh. I think they are being called the same name as part of a bigger thing.

The point I was making is that the annoyance on the Opposition Benches comes from the Government appearing not to be doing this for the right reasons, but just to get the politicians and the public off their back.

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[Martin John Docherty (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to participate in what I believe is one of the most important debates that has taken place here for some years. I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Moray (Angus Robertson) for bringing it to the Floor of the House. Before I proceed, I would also like to commend the comments of the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), with which many on the SNP Benches will of course agree.

We are all aware of the raft of statistics that underpin this debate. At the moment, while many will have welcomed the Prime Minister’s statement yesterday, what we are offering is still technically below the average among European Union members for asylum applications per head of population. As we all know, until recently, only 216 Syrian nationals were resettled in the United Kingdom through the Syrian vulnerable persons relocation scheme. If Members wish to question that, I would direct them in the first instance to the Library, where they will find the document published on 7 December that clearly stipulates it.

I appreciate that we are being conciliatory in this debate, but it is sometimes hard, given my nature, to do that. While the British Government seem like bystanders in this calamity, as we speak, swathes of humanity from the foot of Mount Ararat itself to the Berlin Hauptbahnhof are reaching out across the European continent seeking shelter and refuge—yet not here, not now, although perhaps by the end of what will be called, to our eternal shame, “the refugee Parliament”. I am told that I can take six in my constituency, and they are more than welcome—the more, the merrier.

I am sure that Members, or at least those of us old enough to remember—my hon. Friend the Member for Moray spoke about this earlier—have a feeling of impending déjà vu, as we have been here before. Who here could easily replace boats of Syrians and Libyans with those fleeing the collapse of the former Indo-China and the disaster of communism as it lapped across Cambodia, Laos and, of course, Vietnam, bringing Europe and the world face-to-face with the boat people?

As it did then, this Parliament—and, I am afraid, the Government—limits the ambition of the communities across all of these islands for those who even now seek to reach out beyond the limitations of this place and its perverse choices. Communities such as my own in West Dunbartonshire are even now adopting a cross-party approach through local community-led co-ordination and leadership, seeking to assist and give refuge, when and if the opportunity is afforded us, to those in peril who are fleeing aggression and, yes, even economic catastrophe. Speaking as the vice-chairman of the all-party group on civil society and volunteering, I am sure Members will agree and recognise the voluntary action that my community, along with so many others, are undertaking at this grave moment in our history, as mentioned by the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon).

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

In the hon. Gentleman’s role as the champion for the voluntary sector, is he aware of any other places, apart from own Hornsey and Wood Green constituency, that are making similar efforts? My constituency is going to acquire and provide aid to refugees the weekend after next. There is also a bookshop collecting goods, as well as a school where the children are spending their own pocket money to buy blankets, books and so on. Is he aware of any other constituency where there is so much of an effort to help refugees in this crisis?

[Martin John Docherty]

I am grateful for that intervention, but I am sure that we are all aware of those types of organisations and individuals committing their time through volunteering to help those in need. I have also heard about food banks in Scotland deciding to donate food parcels to those in Calais.

I am sure that some in this Chamber could do without a history lesson, but if this House were ever in need of a history lesson, it would be now. It is a lesson in mass migration, brought about, from my perspective, by failed and inept historical foreign policy. Important choices made go as far back as the peace of Versailles, which brought about the very construction of Syria and so many other nations of the middle east. The decision was taken in 1953 to overthrow a democratically elected Government and to replace it with a truly despotic monarchy in Iran. Then there is the holding up of the regime of Assad and, of course, the invasion of Iraq. This is a hard lesson, one fraught with the disaster whose name we all know—radicalisation. It is a disaster at the expense of the poor and vulnerable—women, children, and the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community. I hope that the Minister will recommend that the Secretary of State engages in broad discussions with charitable and voluntary groups, including LGBT community organisations across the United Kingdom, about how they can play their part in the debate, especially when some people are fleeing persecution that is based on their sexual and gender identity.

It will be a dreadful and historic failure, as recognised by many on the Opposition Benches, if our inaction is continued. I can speak for many of us on the SNP side as the children and grandchildren of the lowest of the low in this debate—economic migrants, just like so many now seeking refuge from Syria, north Africa and across the globe, as Members have mentioned.

SNP Members and those who elect us have long memories. We can smell the stench of poverty that underpins this crisis, and we at least will find some comfort that our Government in Edinburgh are seeking to accept 1,000 refugees—not as a cap or limit, but as a starting point in opening our doors to the world. We in Scotland, like so many across these islands, stand ready in the best traditions of Scotland to offer sanctuary to those desperately in need. We are, after all, “Jock Tamson’s bairns.” This is not the first time that this House has debated such a catastrophe and such appalling suffering. From the very distant past, those debates in this House should inform our debate today.

It is to those very debates that I turn to plead with the British Government on behalf of the destitute and the poor fleeing economic catastrophe and aggression. They are in your hands, and in your power. If you do not save them, they cannae save themselves. I solemnly call upon you to recollect that we predict that many will perish unless you come to their relief.

I am no Daniel O’Connell, yet his plea in 1847 in this very Chamber, prompted by the economic catastrophe that was the plight of the famine, rings as true today as it did then. Our response to him is “let them in”. My own constituency finds its heritage sullied and darkened by that great episode as it stretched across the entire isle of Ireland and across swathes of Scotland and the north of England.

This Government must act without delay. I tell the Minister that I am very much aware of the personal commitment and passion of the Secretary of State on this issue, which I hope he will take back to the Secretary of State, but we must opt into the EU relocation scheme and allow this United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to play its part in the true understanding of a family of nations. The UK Government must critically fulfil their leadership in New York this month, as they sign the impending sustainable development goals. They are the rallying cry for this debate: “leave no one behind.”