Developing Countries: Jobs and Livelihoods

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2016 Westminster Hall

[The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Sir Desmond Swayne)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain), and I thank him for his kind words. He referred to my passion, but it is clear that his passion equals, if not exceeds, mine, as does that of the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott). I sometimes imagine that we disagree less than we think, but what is clear is that we all share the same objective and the same passion.

Today we have debated a very important, game-changing report. Since that report, we have been pushed in a direction that we were very keen to head in in the first place. We have created a new directorate for economic development by combining five separate departments. We have created a new youth and education department to focus on the transition from school to work, and to drive that focus through all the bilateral relationships and all our programmes. We have implemented a new growth diagnostic. This is the focus that my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) demanded there be in every bilateral relationship and every programme. The diagnostic informs every team of the barriers to growth in the countries in which they are working, so that they can devise programmes with the greatest impact on growth. My hon. Friend referred to the new agricultural strategy; it is, as he demanded, focused on smallholder agriculture. We will shortly publish—after we have disposed of that business on 23 June—our new economic development strategy.

The delivery of this agenda is vital to all the global sustainable development goals across the entire piece, and not just to the most obvious ones—1, 8 and 9. We will not see a reduction in world poverty of the order that we want unless we get a great increase in inclusive growth. In the past, we have had growth that has not generated inclusivity or sufficient jobs. It is vital that we get inclusive growth, because as we have heard so often this morning, we need 600 million new jobs in the next decade; otherwise, we will have a growing army of underemployed, frustrated and increasingly angry young people. As we have heard again this morning, lack of economic opportunity, a job and a livelihood is the principal driver of migration. That has been going on for decades. Millions of people have dropped everything that they have known and moved from their homes to the unknown in pursuit of economic activity. We are beginning to notice it as we see that tide of humanity coming up from south-Saharan Africa. Nevertheless, that driver has existed for decades, and we have to address it by providing those jobs.

I accept that not any job will do. It is no good having jobs that enslave. That is why we are still concentrating our programmes on work and freedom. There is what we are doing with the International Labour Organisation in Bangladesh, and there is the ethical trading initiative and the responsible, accountable and transparent enterprise initiative. Those are vital, but in the end it all comes down to jobs. The Government have an important role in that regard. My hon. Friend referred to the importance of public services. Yes, public services are important; there are important jobs and roles in public services. It is precisely for that reason that we take—and manage—the very considerable risks of working through Government-provided services in places such as Nepal, where our healthcare programme is channelled through Government provision, although it is a corrupt environment.

I share the passion of the hon. Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans) for tackling corruption. He is absolutely right, and that is why our programme on governance under SDG 16 is so important to our economic development programme. It is precisely for that reason that we held the anti-corruption summit and, the day before, the summit to engage with civil society on how it deals with that. As I say, the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: where elites hijack the lucrative parts of the economy and wreck it, that impoverishes everyone. When a person gets an important job in the Government or the civil service because they are someone’s cousin, rather than capable of carrying out that function, that leads to complete inefficiency.

Over and over again, we find Governments getting in the way of the creation of jobs, through unwillingness or lack of capacity to raise revenue to invest in the necessary infrastructure; a lack of regulation, or over-regulation; or a lack of contract law or any other law, or of the rule of law. All those things drive away investment.

The real engine of job creation is private sector-led investment. One of the principal barriers to that investment thriving is the lack of necessary infrastructure. A reduction in productivity of some 40% throughout Africa and Asia is accounted for by the lack of necessary infrastructure, and it is estimated that Africa suffers a vital reduction of 2.1% in its annual growth rate as a consequence of the lack of necessary infrastructure.

Some 1 billion people have no access to electricity, and 1.3 billion live nowhere near a road. We must address those infrastructure problems. There is an annual deficit of some $3 trillion a year, in terms of the infrastructure that we need to invest in. Most of that must be provided by Governments. Grant aid will remain important for filling about half of that infrastructure gap, but all investors will need to increase their ability to invest massively if we are to do that. That is why we are working with the World Bank and the regional development banks.

We are working on projects on hydroelectricity in Nepal and power sector reform and roads in Nigeria. We have launched Energy Africa, working in 14 sub-Saharan African countries to address the needs of 600 million people who are without electricity. Although we only launched the campaign last year, we have proved the root; we kick-started the campaign with the work that we did with M-KOPA, which has put in place some 300,000 solar panels that serve 1 million people. It has also used highly innovative methods, so that power can be paid for using pay-as-you-go mobile phones.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

Where we have been relatively slow in moving to meet the infrastructure needs of Africa, the Chinese have moved relatively rapidly. Does he agree that that is not entirely unproblematic, because the Chinese do not share our commitment to human rights?

Foreign Aid Expenditure

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Monday 13th June 2016 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Timms]

I would welcome that, as I welcome the broad support across the Chamber for that commitment. It is interesting to reflect on the reasons for that cross-party support for the 0.7% target, which I think go back to the Jubilee 2000 campaign in the run-up to the millennium, and the tremendous public support for Britain being more generous to the poorest countries in the world. That was then renewed and strengthened by the Make Poverty History campaign in 2005—the great rally in Edinburgh addressed by Nelson Mandela, with the summit at Gleneagles, chaired by Tony Blair, whose decisions made an important contribution.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that a lot of respect has to be paid to the role of the Churches in driving Jubilee 2000? The role of the Churches demonstrates that this matter is not party political, but something that speaks to the good instincts of the British people.

[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.

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[Mike Gapes (in the Chair)]

Order. The sitting is resumed and the debate may continue until 7.54 pm. I call Diane Abbott.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) on introducing this important debate.

I emphasise that it is possible passionately to support our commitment to spend 0.7% of GDP on aid and yet feel very strongly about accountability and transparency, as I do. It is not only a question of the accountability and transparency of the Department for International Development, although I appreciate that it is doing a lot of work on that. It is about accountability and transparency in the big non-governmental organisations, which do excellent work but have more to do on transparency, and it is about the accountability and transparency of the UN institutions, which are often the least transparent actors in development.

I feel strongly about accountability and transparency not just on behalf of the Daily Mail readers in Hackney North but because my family and those of many of my constituents come from the global south. I assure Members that people who live in the global south feel as strongly about accountability, transparency, good governance and minimising corruption as any Daily Mail reader. That is the context in which I wish to make my remarks.

We have spoken a lot about aid, but development is not only about aid. It is worth reminding the House that Africa loses $58 billion more in flows out of Africa than it receives in aid. Aid spending is dwarfed by the financial flows out of countries in Africa. Every year, the continent receives around $30 billion in aid, but it loses $192 billion—more than six times as much as it receives in aid—in debt repayments, lost tax revenue, tax transfers, multinational profits and other financial flows.

When we discuss this subject, we should not think that aid is the only instrument of development. Aid is important, and I defend the 0.7% contribution, but there are other important issues for the developing world. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) pointed out, the value of remittances to some countries of the global south are even more important than aid. The value of those remittances is that they go directly to communities, with no top- slicing through bureaucracy. In the event of humanitarian disaster, it is often remittances that get to the affected communities faster than any aid.

As the Labour party spokesperson on international development, I have been privileged to have been able to make a number of visits to all parts of the world in the past few months and see for myself how DFID money is spent. I went to Uganda with the International HIV/AIDS Alliance to see some really impressive projects focused on women and young people with HIV. I went to Ghana with ActionAid, where I saw how important women’s health projects were funded. I have also been to Somaliland, where I saw evidence of the drought that is sweeping across eastern and southern Africa. Anyone who says our money is being thrown away should see, as I saw, the starving peoples who have lost their livelihoods because their livestock has perished. They are dependent on the aid funds that come from overseas.

[Stephen Doughty]

Is not Somaliland a perfect example, because our aid, security support and diplomatic support are working, together with the Government there, to bring peace and stability in a region that is not known for its peace and stability? It is a perfect example of how we are doing things right.

[Ms Abbott]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that Somaliland is an example of how we are doing things right, although we would not see that on the pages of The Mail on Sunday.

[Mr Mitchell]

Is the hon. Lady aware that Somaliland absolutely makes her point? It has a budget of around £50 million, of which Britain provides something like £10 million, while the remittance value is more than £400 million. That shows that we must all look at more creative ways of ensuring that remittances are well used.

[Ms Abbott]

I agree. I come from a community that sends remittances. Not only are they very important and the diaspora communities that provide them true partners in development, but it is important that they are used creatively. I have been to the camps in Lebanon with Human Appeal and I visited Syrian refugees in Turkey, so I have seen for myself how well our aid can be used and how important it is.

Some very unpleasant remarks have been made about the Palestinian Authority. I am all for transparency and accountability, but let us remember that United States Secretary of State John Kerry said:

“Prime Minister Netanyahu made clear he does not wish for the collapse of the Palestinian Authority”.

He pointed out that, without the Palestinian Authority, Israel would have to

“shoulder the responsibility for providing basic services in the West Bank”.

The ODI report on the matter clearly said that the UK support on the ground helped to prevent economic collapse and an escalation in violence.

[Andy Slaughter]

I wonder whether my hon. Friend shares my dismay that there has been a concerted campaign today to demonise the Government’s funding of the Palestinian Authority, which the Minister has rightly resisted. Does she agree that, if there is concern about UK and EU money going into Palestine, we should be most concerned about the demolition of Palestinian homes and villages funded by the UK to make way for illegal Israeli settlements?

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[Ms Abbott]

My hon. Friend puts it very well. It is of no help to people in the region, particularly ordinary Palestinians on the west bank, to demonise the Palestinian Authority. I am confident that DFID is exercising scrutiny and is not giving money directly to so-called terrorists.

I said at the beginning that being committed to 0.7% is not the same as saying that we should not have more accountability and more transparency with all the key actors. I listened with interest to the testimony of Ian Birrell of The Mail on Sunday on 6 June to the International Development Committee’s inquiry into the Government’s use of private contractors. I want to let it be known that I am interested in the issues he raised. I share his concern that the Government might be allowing

“excessive profiteering off the back of British taxpayers on the one hand and off the backs of the poor”

on the other. Those issues are worth looking at. I know that the Chair of the International Development Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), thinks that, too.

I am also concerned about DFID’s use of the big four accountants, which I believe to be contrary to sustainable development. PricewaterhouseCoopers, for example, is involved in industrial-scale marketing of tax avoidance schemes for corporations in the global south. I have other concerns about how the Government are spending aid to subsidise the fossil fuel industry and on deportation deals and building prisons. However, having expressed my concerns, overall I think that every single speaker in this debate has spelled out how British aid has helped strengthen health and education systems across the global south and contributed to cutting extreme poverty between 1990 and 2011 by 60%. Our contributions to the global health fund and the Ross Fund have played an enormous role in the battle against the killers malaria, HIV/Aids and TB.

As it is, the UK spends less on aid as a proportion of gross national income than Sweden, Norway, Luxembourg, Denmark and Holland, but we are the first country to commit to the fixed 0.7% provision. When aid is spent efficiently—that will often mean locally or through small grants, as has been said this afternoon—it builds capacity in local institutions and reduces poverty and inequality. When Labour formed DFID, we did not do so to set up an aid industry; we did so with the aim of ending aid dependency.

Supporting 0.7% does not mean that we can suspend our critical faculties in regards to how efficiently and well some of the money is spent, but we should be proud of committing to spending 0.7% of GDP on aid. The money we spend through aid often gives us more influence and moral suasion than some of the money spent on military adventures. I am glad that almost every Member who has taken part in the debate has supported 0.7%. Certainly on this side of the House we stand not just for a commitment to 0.7%, but for a continuing commitment to scrutiny and accountability. That is not just for our voters, but because the people of the global south deserve no less.

Oral Answers to Questions

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Wednesday 4th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Swayne]

My right hon. Friend is right. The common reporting standard is vital, together with the automatic exchange of taxpayer account information. Precisely because of that, we have a pilot running in Ghana to draw developing countries into that arrangement.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

The Minister will be aware that tax avoidance in developing countries costs them three times what they get in aid. Why will the Department not put pressure on Government colleagues to insist that offshore centres such as the British Virgin Islands and the Cayman Islands set up registers of beneficial ownership that are open to the public?

[Mr Swayne]

We are vastly in advance of the situation left by previous Administrations, and we are advancing by agreement. That information will be available if countries sign up to the initiative for the automatic exchange of beneficial ownership registers, and next month the United Kingdom will be the first country to publish that information.

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[Justine Greening]

We have seen the group’s report, and we think it addresses some key issues and is realistic. It is also worth pointing out that the number of cases of polio in the world this year is down to a handful. We are within touching distance of seeing this terrible disease eradicated from our planet for the first time in history.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

Last month, I visited Somaliland in the horn of Africa to see for myself some of the effects of the drought that has swept southern and eastern Africa and some of the 36 million people facing hunger. I met desperate people who need food, water and shelter. What steps is the Secretary of State taking to ensure that this drought does not become a famine?

[Justine Greening]

The hon. Lady raises an important issue, which underlines the fragility of many countries in Africa which, while on the path to development, face challenges such as El Niño. Specifically in Somalia, we have made additional funding available to tackle this humanitarian crisis to try to do precisely what the hon. Lady suggests, which is so important.

Clean Water and Sanitation (Africa)

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Thursday 21st April 2016 Westminster Hall

[Pauline Latham]

Just this once, it was not the hon. Gentleman’s accent that confused me, but the fact I could not hear. That is my problem, and I apologise.

Clean water is one of the fundamental things that we expect to have. In this country, we have had it for donkey’s years. but we recently saw the problems in the north-west when water was contaminated for some time. One suddenly realised how much we take it for granted in this country that we can wash and use the washing machine and probably the dishwasher. We can have a shower or bath or clean our teeth with no worries at all. That incident showed the population of Britain that we use a huge amount of water without thinking about it.

For those in a developing country—we know that almost a third of the global population lack access to sanitation facilities and more than 660 million people lack access to clean water—it is a daily problem that they have to live with and deal with. We see so many young people dying under the age of five because they do not have access to clean water or sanitation. We and many other countries accept water as something that we can use at any time, and we should be looking to help the countries affected. Other countries have to look themselves at improving clean water facilities, but it is incredibly difficult. Where does a President or a Government start if people have no decent housing, no clean water, no or few sanitation facilities, no education and no good health facilities?

Without clean water, people cannot have access to education or decent healthcare. I have seen some hospitals where there is no running water—how can a hospital facility have no running water? How can things be kept clean? Even in the Crimean war, Florence Nightingale understood that the one thing needed in a hospital is cleanliness and sanitation. That was a very long time ago, but some countries in Africa do not have that facility, and that is totally shocking.

I am pleased to see that sustainable development goal 6 is the aim of achieving universal access to safe water and sanitation by 2030, but 2030 is not very far away—only 14 years. We have been involved in international development for many years, as have many other countries, non-governmental organisations, charities and individuals, along with diaspora communities that send money back. Why do some Governments appear to have little will to install decent water facilities? It is not difficult to do; it just needs a comprehensive plan.

As a member of the Select Committee on International Development, I have visited many countries in Africa where I have been shocked by the poor facilities that people have to live with. For instance, when we went on a visit to Burundi, we were embedded in a house right out in the sticks for 24 hours with no water and no sanitation. The only place to go to the toilet was where they had literally dug a hole specifically for me to go in. I found that rather embarrassing—not for me, but for them to have to do that. They did it, though, and the joke was that they made a wooden box for me to sit on so that I would not have to squat. They thought that as a westerner, I would not have been able to cope with that. It would not have bothered me, but they have to deal with that all the time, and I do not know that things are that much better now in Burundi. There are a lot of other problems there, but when there is conflict in an area, it makes things harder still, and not just for the people living there. How do Governments, if they are in conflict and there is a civil war, or whatever the situation is, deal with the country’s problems with water and sanitation?

I have spent a lot of my time in Uganda with a friend of mine who was a Member of Parliament there. Sadly, he lost at the last election; I do not think it was quite fair. He was very keen on helping his community have sanitation and water as well as decent health. He is a doctor, so he is very keen on health facilities, but he was struggling. I was able to go to Uganda at the beginning of this year, and I saw for myself the problems with malaria. There is no clean water. I went to a hospital that had no sheets on the bed. The parents and family members who had to go to that hospital with their children had nowhere to go to the loo. It was a state-run hospital, and I think that situation is pretty appalling. Some of the children who were in the hospitals I went to did not have malaria. They might have had dysentery or diarrhoea, which are relatively easy to cure if there is clean water and the right medication.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

The hon. Lady made an interesting reference to the pit latrine that she encountered in Burundi, but does she agree that those are the least of the problem? Within memory, people in this country had to use toilets at the bottom of their garden or chamber pots. Part of the problem is that there are too many parts of the world where people are still accustomed to defecating in the open, in fields, with all the hygiene problems that that causes.

[Pauline Latham]

I was going to mention that problem. I well remember living in Lincolnshire as a child and having to go down the garden to the toilet. There was a large seat for the adults and a small seat for the children. I did not mind doing that, because I had not known anything different. Of course, at night we had a chamber pot, and when it was freezing cold it was frozen in the morning. That is not that many years ago; I know I am old, but I am not as old as the Queen, although I suspect she never went down the garden to the loo. Nevertheless, I remember doing that, and it was something that one lived with. I remember having a tin bath in front of the fire with everybody around me—there was no hot water upstairs. I was tiny, but I do remember it. It has not been that many years since we solved the problem, but we have solved it.

As the hon. Lady says, one problem is open defecation. I described the hole in the ground in Burundi, and it was a tiny hole just for me, not for anyone else. The problem with open defecation is that people have to go into the bushes to get some privacy, so they are at risk of rape and all sorts of violence. Of course, when the rains come, all the sewage is washed through the villages, which is one of the biggest problems in many places. When the Select Committee went to South Sudan, we saw that was happening. The people in the refugee camp who had been told to leave Sudan and go to South Sudan—although they and previous generations had never lived there, they were considered South Sudanese, so they had to go and had walked there—had no toilet facilities and no water. People can go to collect water, but toilet facilities are a basic human right and everybody should have them. It is a huge problem.

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[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Percy. I thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for initiating this very important debate. I listened with interest to the contributions from the hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham), my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods) and the hon. Members for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) and for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown). They all brought their different perspectives and insights to bear on this subject.

[Mr Peter Bone in the Chair]

I do not want to repeat the points that have already been made, but I will begin by saying this. Last week, I was thousands of miles away from this Chamber in Somaliland, in the horn of Africa, where people are suffering an absolute lack of clean water—drought. If the Minister will forgive me, I will say a few words about the incidence of drought in eastern and southern Africa before I complete my remarks.

However, on the question of clean water and sanitation, I, like others, pay my respects to WaterAid, an international organisation whose mission is to transform the lives of the poorest and most marginalised people by improving access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene. As hon. Members have said, WaterAid works with partners in 37 countries, and within Africa it works in 11 countries. Its global advocacy priority focuses on the importance of water, sanitation and hygiene in improving the health and nutrition of newborns and children.

There can be a tendency in advanced western societies to take clean water for granted. In this country, we expect to turn on a tap and see clean water. We probably spend more time worrying about water, precipitation and rain than about its absence, but I remind the Chamber that, in north America, people are just coming through an awful crisis, in Flint, Michigan, caused by an absence of clean water. In 2014, the water supply for that very poor city in Michigan was changed to save money. As a consequence, for the past two years, the people of Flint have been exposed to polluted water; 6,000 to 12,000 children have been exposed to drinking water with high levels of lead; and, most recently, Government officials have had to resign and criminal charges have been filed. Even in relatively prosperous western countries, we should not take clean water for granted.

Before the Minister responds to the debate, I have the following points to put to him; they were reflected in earlier speeches by my colleagues. Hon. Members want the Government to set an ambitious agenda that will help to ensure that SDG 6 is achieved. It is crucial that water, sanitation and hygiene are integrated into Government plans to help to achieve other goals—for example, on poverty, hunger, education and gender equality. Water, sanitation and hygiene are enablers for and signifiers of different types of development, so the UK Government should prioritise water, sanitation and hygiene. That of course includes increased resources. The proportion of UK bilateral aid that goes to water, sanitation and hygiene is currently just 2%. We would like those resources to be increased and will be interested to hear what the Minister has to say to that. We would like water, sanitation and hygiene to be integrated into relevant health and nutrition programmes, including those to be announced in the bilateral aid review, which is expected shortly.

The UK Government should use their global influence to encourage national Governments to ensure that water and sanitation is prioritised. It is a contradiction that in Ghana, for instance, residential developments being built now are the equal of any in Miami or elsewhere in north America, but it is the country with the second highest level of open defecation in the world. We want to ensure in these societies that as well as private affluence, we see an end to public squalor. That includes public defecation and an emphasis on clean water, sanitation and hygiene.

This August, global leaders will attend a crucial summit on nutrition to pledge resources to tackle all forms of malnutrition. At that summit, we would all like the Government to prioritise water, sanitation and hygiene within any financial commitments that are made. The Government should also make clear the links between water, sanitation and hygiene and nutrition in keynote speeches that they deliver.

We are faced with many development challenges in an increasingly globalised world, but drought in the horn of Africa and southern Africa is a real issue. I was pleased to visit British Somaliland last week with the Muslim Charities Forum to see at first hand the consequences of that absence of water and to understand how problematic an absolute lack of water is. The peoples of Somaliland are largely pastoral, and they take their flocks of goats, sheep and camels from region to region looking for water to graze. In effect, they follow the clouds. A succession of seasons of drought has put them in a serious position. The danger in British Somaliland is that drought may turn into famine.

We know that Ministers have some excellent programmes in Somalia, but immediate help is needed, both to provide water, food and shelter and to make regions such as Somalia resilient to the increasing incidence of drought, which means more boreholes, better irrigation and better methods of storing rainwater. We saw flash floods when we left British Somaliland, but the water runs off the earth and into the rivers. Clean water is an issue, but so is an absolute lack of water. If the Minister is unable to answer now, will he write on what is being done to help the people of Somalia to deal with the incidence of drought that they are enduring now and on what is being done to help them to be resilient? With climate change, such regions of the world, which once might have seen drought every seven years or every decade, are seeing drought year after year. They need help in both the short term and the medium term to become resilient to drought.

It is easy in a country such as the UK to take water for granted, but whether it is the complete absence of water in the shape of drought, the absence of clean water or the absence of sanitation, such issues are crucial for developing countries. In this Chamber, which is within a few hundred yards of the River Thames and Peter Bazalgette’s great sewer, we cannot forget that nothing in the 19th century pushed back the incidence of infectious disease more than the creation of genuinely clean water and access to sanitation. What we did in the UK in the 19th century we can do in Africa and the developing world in the 21st century. I await the Minister’s response with interest.

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[Mr Hurd]

This is freaky; my hon. Friend has obviously seen my speech, because my next point is on Sierra Leone.

In Sierra Leone our support has been crucial in a country that was so cruelly affected by Ebola. I look forward to seeing our support on the ground there in a forthcoming visit. Our support for solid waste management in Bo will create more than 300 new jobs. There are many dimensions to the support being provided that we need to understand and appreciate. We have been leading innovation in how to deliver water and sanitation programmes. Through the WASH programme we have reached nearly 5 million people, but we have paid the NGOs undertaking the projects only once we have independently confirmed that the services are in place. Of course, we are working in a context of extreme and quite understandable scrutiny of the value for money of what we do, so as we contract services we have to be more innovative in how we push to make sure that we pay for results and get value for money for the British taxpayer.

[Ms Abbott]

I quite agree with the Minister about value for money, but there is another aspect that we have to be certain of. It is not enough to have capital spending and to physically put in place toilets, boreholes and so on; we have to work with communities so that they actually use those facilities.

[Mr Hurd]

I could not agree more with the hon. Lady, and I will say a little more about that.

The focus of the debate has been largely on the role of Governments, with some entirely correct acknowledgment of the role of civil society. We have perhaps not talked enough about the role of the private sector, which has an enormously important role to play in its responsibilities and opportunities to scale up and sustain solutions. I draw Members’ attention to an interesting initiative, the Toilet Board Coalition, which is looking at new ways in which companies are planning investments in water and sanitation. Through our support provided to Water & Sanitation for the Urban Poor, DFID has played a leading role in developing private sector sanitation solutions, including the award-winning Clean Team, which is delivering high quality services in Ghana. That is an example of using a business model for installation and service, which provides an opportunity to scale and sustain work.

So there has been some genuine progress, but, as the tone of the debate has made clear, not enough. There is still a great deal more to do. There have been shortfalls, and it is important to understand why. Meeting the challenge of water supply requires a collective effort of Governments, donors, NGOs and the private sector. On sustainability, at any one time 40% of water supplies do not function because of poor operation and maintenance. On sanitation, there has been a gap, because we are fighting against the reality of political and community priorities, which shift if cholera strikes. Sanitation is the responsibility of the household and community, but households have competing priorities.

On the hon. Lady’s point about sustaining services and building community support, in a lot of the work that we do, our preference is to work through community-led total sanitation solutions, which is about promoting the construction of latrines and also the maintenance and rebuilding of them after the rains come. We have to take time to invest in and engage with the community so that they understand the priority that should be attached to this against other competing priorities. So this work is not easy.

I assure the House, particularly the hon. Member for Strangford, who secured the debate, that the UK remains—there is cross-party support for this; we have heard it today and I am grateful for it—hugely committed to this agenda and wants to stay ambitious. We have to because, as various Members have said, sustainable development goal 6 calls for universal access to water and sanitation by 2030, which is massively ambitious and time marches on, but we are determined to play a key role in achieving the goal.

The UK aid strategy confirmed that, on top of the millions of people we helped to gain access to water and sanitation during the previous Parliament, the Government are committed—it is printed on my table in my ministerial office—to helping a further 60 million people gain access to water and sanitation by 2020. That is the commitment we will be held accountable for and we will meet that through our bilateral aid review and through our centrally managed programmes. Our commitment is hugely ambitious, but we are determined to see it through.

HIV: Women and Girls

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Tuesday 12th April 2016 Westminster Hall

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

Let me first say what a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Buck. When we first met 30 years ago, giving out leaflets on the streets of Paddington, who would have guessed that I would be my party’s spokesperson on development, but you would be a member of the august Panel of Chairs?

Let me congratulate the hon. Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer) on securing this important debate. Let me say a word about the position of women and girls in the UK and remind the House that the part of the population with the most disproportionate incidence of HIV/AIDS is African women. The reason they have that level of infection is because if people think the level of stigma in the population as a whole against HIV and AIDS is bad, for men who have sex with men in the African community it is so much worse. It is all about stigma, so anything we can do in this Chamber to break down that stigma will save lives not just in the global south, but in communities in some of our constituencies.

As we have heard, the number of women and girls living with HIV continues to increase in every region of the world. As a group of politicians, we should pause and think about what that means to people’s lives and hopes. This is not just abstraction and about position papers; it is actual people’s lives. Last year I was privileged to visit Uganda on a wonderful trip, organised by the Aids Alliance and Stop Aids, to meet the men and women working on Uganda’s HIV/AIDS response at Government level, at non-governmental organisation level and at grassroots level. It was an amazing trip.

I visited 10 different projects in all during my time in Uganda, but three stand out. One was a project involving the Lady Mermaid Bureau and Crested Crane Lighters. This was a project for female sex workers—actually, we could not consider those women victims. We went to the market where they plied their trade. They spoke to us about their fears, their experience of police harassment, their hopes, their efforts to get information and protection to younger sex workers, and their hopes for their children. This is the sort of grassroots project among a marginalised community that is so important to fund and support if we really are to roll back HIV/AIDS in those communities.

I also met the Uganda Youth Development Link, which is a genuinely young persons-led project—the chair was 28 years of age. It is a network of young people from 10 to 30 living with HIV/AIDS, and they pointed out that one of the problems with HIV response in the global south is that it does not reach young people: it is not reaching under-18s; the work is not being done in schools. In what are very young societies, if we are not focusing on under-18s or doing the work in schools, we are not doing what we need to do to reach the goal of eradicating HIV/AIDS.

I saw many projects in Uganda, and my trip brought it home to me that, in the end, it is not about what we say here in this House. It is not even about what the big NGOs and the UN can do. It is about communities and empowering people—particularly women and those in marginal communities—to offer leadership and to roll back this scourge.

We have made a great deal of progress on HIV/AIDS, but it is important that we do not roll back on that progress now that our goal of eradicating altogether is within sight. I hope the House will forgive me if I remind it of Labour’s record on this issue. We have continued to be a champion in the AIDS response, leading the first global promise to deliver universal access to HIV treatment, care and support by 2010 at the 2007 Gleneagles G8 summit.

The Government are to be applauded for their contribution to the Global Fund, which has disbursed $27 billion on programmes for HIV, TB and malaria, and programmes supported by the Global Fund had saved 17 million lives by the end of 2014. However, there is a concern about bilateral spending and the absence in the Government’s programmes and policy of a specific commitment on HIV/AIDS. Commendable as the Global Fund and the Government’s support for it are, bilateral aid for HIV continues to be important to meet the gaps that the Global Fund cannot fill and to equip affected communities—whether it is the young people or the brave and vibrant sex workers I met in Uganda—with the skills, tools and information they need to help the Global Fund to meet its goals.

Sadly, it would appear—I am content to be put right by the Minister—that UK bilateral funding for HIV has been decreasing, and many are concerned that it may come to a complete end. I would stress to the Minister that we cannot end aid dependency or stop thousands of lives being lost to AIDS month by month in regions of the world if we do not equip communities, including marginalised ones, with the tools to tackle and treat HIV/AIDS.

We need to build the capacity of communities to demand their rights. Ending AIDS by 2030 requires investment in communities and support to demand their rights, and the evolution of the Global Fund clearly demonstrates the value of such investments. There are still challenges in ensuring that key populations—for example, LGBT populations or sex workers—have a voice, but the Global Fund has developed strong human rights principles and places a value on the inclusion of those populations in governance structures. That evolution is driven by the affected communities, but it needs strategic bilateral funding.

As colleagues have said, the sustainable development goals have committed to ensuring that no one is left behind. The UK Government, in their new aid strategy, have committed to leading those efforts. Delivering on that promise, however, will require ensuring that those who are most marginalised, vulnerable and excluded can benefit from efforts to deliver the SDGs, including the goal on ending AIDS. The Global Fund cannot achieve that alone.

We have to consider the practicalities. I saw in Uganda last year that condom use—which is not a high-tech medical intervention, but a vital one—in the global south has gone down. There has been an increase in new infections, and under-18s are not yet a target group. Forty per cent of the Ugandan population are under 30 years of age. That very high proportion of young people is true across the global south, and one challenge faced by groups seeking to work on HIV/AIDS is the rise of vicious anti-human rights legislation on homosexuality and the LGBT population. In Uganda, we found that that was a major obstacle in the communities that needed to be reached.

I will mention one more group that I met in Uganda. Icebreakers Uganda is a youth-led LGBTI organisation that we visited in Kampala. Think what it means to be an LGBTI organisation in a country that has passed legislation that could end up with people losing their lives for admitting to being LGBTI. Despite the challenges, the organisation offers services in 14 districts in Uganda, runs a 24-hour service and has a house and centre for men who have sex with men. Due to the punitive legislation and criminalisation, the organisation has to be very careful about how it works, but it continues to work.

I commend the Government for their contribution to the Global Fund. It is unfortunate, as we have heard, that we have only promised 80%, not 100%, of what we should be providing. I stress the importance of making HIV/AIDS a specific goal and a specific issue in relation to women and girls. The Government cannot expect to be taken seriously in their concern for women and girls if the issue of HIV/AIDS is not only high up the agenda, but explicitly so in the speeches that are made, on the Department’s website and in the availability of funding.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Swayne]

I hope that I will be given the chance to get there, and that my statement today will be regarded as something of an explicit statement in lieu of what Members have not been able to find on the website, but that is a question we might come back to.

As I was saying, this has to be our main effort if we are going to have any prospect of getting to zero: to zero new cases, zero deaths and, as the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington and my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant) pointed out so importantly, to zero stigma and discrimination—a vital part of the equation.

How are we going to achieve that? I believe that the proper principle is to deploy our resources where the need is greatest, where the burden is greatest and where the resources are fewest. I have to reassure my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green in respect of his perfectly proper concern about middle-income status countries. The reality is that the Global Fund deploys half its resources in middle-income countries and specifically has programmes to deal with neglected, vulnerable populations in high middle-income countries. We have given £9 million to the Robert Carr fund specifically to address some of those issues.

I put it to hon. Members that as countries develop and become wealthier—I accept entirely that, as the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) pointed out, there is a question of what defines a middle-income country, and there is a wide spread—there has to be an expectation and a challenge to them to start deploying more of their resources to deal with the problems of healthcare and AIDS in particular. It is very much part of the Addis agenda that countries deploy their own resources, and part of the challenge to us and to the Global Fund is to hold them to account for doing so.

My hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green was right to challenge me on the issue of research and development. I do have concerns, but we are the leading investor in product development partnerships, which delink the market incentives for research and development and replace them with the prioritisation of public health objectives. Some 11 new products are now on the market in low-income countries as a consequence of the partnerships that we have developed. In addition, we have invested. We are the fifth largest funder of UNITAID and have put €60 million into its programme for developing diagnostics and treatments. Indeed, there is also its groundbreaking development in the treatment of paediatrics, with some 750,000 treatment regimes for children.

[Ms Abbott]

I agree with the Minister that as countries get wealthier, in principle they should take responsibility for their own HIV/AIDS programmes. However, when there are allegedly middle-income countries that are members of the Commonwealth but which, to all intents and purposes, are going backwards on LGBT rights, does Her Majesty’s Government not have a responsibility to intervene with the type of projects that would make it easier to access marginalised communities?

[Mr Swayne]

I accept entirely that there is a challenge to all the developed world and all right-thinking countries to hold those regimes to account for their treatment of human rights and respect for human rights. Nobody should be left behind—that is the principle that we have to abide by—and we must find programmes and measures to deal with that. I accept that the hon. Lady is right on this issue.

On the issue of research and development, we are alive to this problem, but let us consider it a work in progress. I accept entirely that there are still problems, but I am glad that the World Health Organisation is now implementing what it calls an observatory on research and development, and that a working group will be set up to drive the matter forward.

The issue of condoms was raised by the hon. Lady and by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). I am very much in favour of the distribution of high-quality male and female condoms. What is more, I want to see much wider distribution of the benefits of microbicides, which were raised by the hon. Member for Glasgow North with respect to the rings and gels that are being used and in which we have invested some £20 million. I believe that that is essential.

The hon. Member for Strangford raised a key point—I think his words were that AIDS is being used as “a weapon of war.” He is right about that, and I want to see reproductive and sexual health as a key part of our response to any humanitarian emergency.

Of course, I want to see a successful replenishment of the Global Fund. That is essential—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Glasgow North is signalling that he wants a commitment to be made now, but I am going to have to disappoint hon. Members over a figure and commitment now. That has to be left to the Secretary of State and it can only be done once the bilateral aid review and the multilateral aid review have been published. However, I am impressed by the way in which the Global Fund has attempted to address our preoccupation with women and girls and to make its response to women and girls central to its strategy. We now want to see how that changes things on the ground, because women’s needs are highly complex and our response has to be correspondingly comprehensive.

My hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green asked me on a number of occasions how we were going to address the needs of women and girls, and it is a response that goes well beyond what we can do specifically to address the issue of AIDS. It is a question of changing culture and of changing law. It is a question of changing the perception of human rights. It is a question of changing economic development and of giving women the power to protect themselves. It is about empowering women and giving them information and access to family planning services. It is about giving them an education and a livelihood. All these things will empower women to ensure that they are enabled to negotiate the terms under which sexual intercourse takes place. However, I tell my hon. Friend this: a world free of AIDS—one in which absolutely no one is left behind—is one in which the rights of a girl are promoted and protected from the minute she is born.

Oral Answers to Questions

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Wednesday 16th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

As the hon. Gentleman will be aware, HMRC leads on these negotiations, but they are progressing well and the House may be interested to know that the Government of Malawi issued a press statement on how they feel the negotiation is going. They talked about

“fruitful discussions to review and modernize the existing agreement”

and said that in their view:

“These discussions are progressing very well”.

I can assure the hon. Gentleman that we will continue to work alongside the Treasury to ensure that tax systems in the countries in which DFID works are developed so that in time they can self-fund their own development, releasing the UK from doing that.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

But the UK’s current tax treaty with Malawi severely restricts the ability of the Government of Malawi to tax British firms operating there. Is this not a case of DFID giving with one hand while UK tax policies take away with the other?

[Justine Greening]

I do not agree at all and, perhaps most importantly, neither do the Government of Malawi, who said:

“Whilst the current agreement is admittedly aged, there is no evidence that the agreement has motivated some British investors to deprive the Malawi Government of its revenues. On the contrary, both the Malawi Government and the British Government, as well as the nationals of the two countries, have evidently acted in good faith to ensure that neither party is exploited on the basis of the current agreement.”

[Ms Abbott]

But does the Secretary of State agree that the era of outdated and unscrutinised tax treaties that create opportunities for multinational tax avoidance must come to an end?

[Justine Greening]

It is time that the international tax system worked more effectively so that countries such as Malawi can mobilise their own domestic resources, including tax. The hon. Lady will know that this particular treaty was last updated in 1978. The Government have taken the initiative to work with the Malawi Government to update this relatively old treaty and, as I have set out, those negotiations are going well. Of course, it sits alongside the rest of the work the Government have done on beneficial ownership and improving transparency in tax so that developing countries can get their fair share.

Humanitarian Crisis: Greece

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

For many months, we have pressed for the comprehensive approach that, as my hon. Friend says, is required. The crisis has not emerged just in the last few weeks. There is an EU-Turkey summit next week, which will give us a good chance to see a more structured response from the European Union. However, throughout the process, the UK approach has steadily emerged as the most sensible. First, it deals with root causes. It helps people where they are in the region, and considers some of the reasons for their loss of hope about staying there, such as lack of jobs and the inability to get their children back into school. Where people need to relocate, we are enabling them to do so safely and securely.

We are working with UNHCR and other agencies on the ground to identify the most vulnerable people affected by this crisis in the region, and we are relocating those who need relocation in a sensible, managed way. That is much better for those people because they do not have to put their lives in the hands of people smugglers, and it is significantly better for the countries that people go to, because it enables them—as in the UK—to work with local authorities and communities, and ensure that they are prepared to take in refugees who are being relocated, and that the right services and provisions are in place when they arrive.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State has spoken again about what the Government are doing for refugees in the middle east, which is wholly commendable, but this urgent question is about the millions of refugees—including half a million Syrians—in Europe, and especially the plight of Greece. I was in Greece last month. The Greek people have been as hospitable as they can be, but their Prime Minister said this week that with the closure of the Macedonian border, and with tens of thousands of people backing up in Greece in the streets of Athens and on the islands, Greece runs the risk of becoming a permanent “warehouse of souls”.

What are the Government doing to get bilateral aid to the Greeks in this crisis, and to encourage Turkey to do something about the thousands of refugees who are being shipped from Turkey into Greece, with some coming increasingly from north Africa? What pressure are the Government bringing to bear on Turkey to put a stop to that and to make it easier for refugees in Turkey to work and get education for their children? Irrespective of the fact that we are not in Schengen, what are the Government doing to work with fellow members of the European family of nations to be more effective against people traffickers and provide safe routes for refugees? Above all, how can we turn our back on the people of Greece, who risk being overwhelmed because of the absence of a strategic and humanitarian approach to this issue from all EU nations, including the UK?

[Justine Greening]

I strongly disagree with the hon. Lady’s last statement, because the UK is the largest contributor to the humanitarian response, including in Europe, and we have provided nearly £55 million to the Mediterranean migration crisis. She will be aware of the work that we have done in the Mediterranean helping to save lives in recent months with our Royal Navy and Border Force cutters. We have provided Greece with around £19 million of support in total, much of that to help the UNHCR, some to help NGOs on the ground and amazing organisations such as the Red Cross, and some to help the International Organisation for Migration. We have also worked with Greece to help it manage its borders more effectively.

The work that Britain is doing is showing the way to other member states in Europe with a sensible, thoughtful approach to this crisis that can help us not only to deal with root causes, which is what we are doing in the region, but to show that we must all provide support to refugees who are arriving closer to home here in Europe. The UK is leading the way in that.

Syria Crisis: UK Response

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Monday 8th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for International Development (Justine Greening)]

With permission, Mr Speaker, I shall make a statement updating the House on the recent Syria conference, which the UK co-hosted with Kuwait, Norway, Germany and the United Nations last Thursday.

For nearly five years, the Syrian people have suffered unimaginable horrors at the hands of the Assad regime and, more recently, Daesh. Inside Syria, 13.5 million people are in desperate need, while a further 4.6 million people have become refugees. As we have seen over the past 72 hours alone, the impact on the people of the region is terrible and profound. When I was in Lebanon and Jordan last month, I spoke to refugees, some of whom were spending their fifth winter under a tent, and their stories were similar. When they left their homes, they thought they would be back in weeks or perhaps months at the most, but for an overwhelming number it has turned out to be years, and there is no end in sight.

Not only is Syria the world’s biggest and most urgent humanitarian crisis, but its far-reaching consequences are being felt across Europe and touching our lives here in Britain. More than 1 million refugees and migrants risked their lives crossing the Mediterranean last year. Of these, half were fleeing the bloodbath in Syria.

Since the fighting began, Britain has been at the forefront of the humanitarian response to the Syria conflict. Aid from the UK is already helping to provide food for people inside Syria every month, as well as clean water and sanitation for hundreds of thousands of refugees across the region. Our work on the Syria crisis gives people in the region hope for a better future, and is also firmly in Britain’s national interest. Without British aid, hundreds of thousands more refugees might feel they had no alternative but to risk their lives seeking to get to Europe.

Despite all that, more was needed. The UN Syria appeals for the whole of last year ended up only 54% funded. Other countries needed to follow the UK’s lead and step up to the plate. That is why the UK announced we would co-host an international conference in London on behalf of Syria and the region, building on three successful conferences held in Kuwait in previous years. Last Thursday, we brought together more than 60 countries and organisations, including 33 Heads of State and Governments. The stage was set for the international community to deliver real and lasting change for the people affected by the crisis, but in the end it was going to come down to choices.

Could we pledge the record-breaking billions needed, going much further than previous conferences, and commit to going beyond people’s basic needs and delivering viable, long-term solutions on jobs and education for Syria’s refugees and the countries supporting them? At the London conference, the world made the right choices to do all of those things. Countries, donors and businesses stepped up and raised new funds for the crisis amounting to more than $11 billion. This included $5.8 billion for 2016 and another $5.4 billion for 2017-20. It was the largest amount ever committed in a single day in response to a humanitarian crisis, and it means that more has been raised in the first five weeks of this year for the Syria crisis than was raised in the whole of 2015.

The UK, once again, played its part. We announced that we would double our commitment, increasing our total pledge to Syria and the region to more than £2.3 billion. Going beyond people’s basic needs, the world said at the London conference that there must be no lost generation of Syrian children and pledged to deliver education to children inside Syria and to at least 1 million refugee and host-community children in the region outside Syria who were out of school. This is an essential investment not only in those children, but in Syria’s future. It also gives those countries that are generously hosting refugees temporarily the investment in their education systems that will benefit them in the longer term.

The London conference also made a critical choice on supporting jobs for refugees and economic growth in the countries hosting them. We hope that historic commitments with Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan will create at least 1 million jobs in countries neighbouring Syria, so that refugees have a livelihood close to home. That will also help to create jobs for local people and leave a legacy of economic growth. By making those choices, we are investing in what is, overwhelmingly, the first choice of Syrian refugees: to stay in the region, closer to their home country and their families who are so often still in it. If we can give Syrians hope for a better future where they are, they are less likely to feel that they have no choice other than to make perilous journeys to Europe.

I wish to thank all those civil servants from my own Department, the Cabinet Office, the Foreign Office and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills for working so tirelessly as a team to help us deliver such a successful and vital conference. It is not often that civil servants get the thanks that they deserve, so on this occasion I decided to put my thanks on record.

The world has offered an alternative vision of hope to all those affected by this crisis, but, in the end, only peace will give the Syrian people back their future. The establishment of the International Syria Support Group at the end of 2015 was an important step on the path to finding a political settlement to the conflict. The Syrian opposition has come together to form the Higher Negotiations Committee to engage in negotiations with the regime on political transition, and the UN launched proximity talks between the Syrian parties in January.

The UN special envoy to Syria took the decision to pause these talks following an increase in airstrikes and violence by the Assad regime, backed by Russia. The UK has called on all sides to take steps to create the conditions for peace negotiations to continue. In particular, Russia must use its influence over the regime to put a stop to indiscriminate attacks and the unacceptable violations of international law. Across Syria, Assad and other parties to the conflict are wilfully impeding humanitarian access on a day-by-day basis. It is brutal, unacceptable and illegal to use starvation as a weapon of war.

In London, world leaders demanded an end to those abuses, including the illegal use of siege and obstruction of humanitarian aid. Our London conference raised the matter of resourcing for life-saving humanitarian support, which must be allowed to reach those who are in need as a result of the Syria conflict, irrespective of where they are.

I also want to take this opportunity to provide an update on the campaign against Daesh in Iraq and Syria. Since my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary last updated the House on the campaign against Daesh in Syria and Iraq, the global coalition, working with partner forces, has put further pressure on Daesh. Iraqi forces, with coalition support, have retaken large portions of Ramadi. In Syria, the coalition has supported the capture of the Tishrin Dam and surrounding villages as well as areas south of al-Hawl.

The UK is playing its part. As of 5 February, RAF Typhoon, Tornado and Reaper aircraft have flown more than 2,000 combat missions and carried out more than 585 successful strikes across Iraq and Syria. We are also leading efforts to sanction those trading with, or supporting, Daesh. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister gained agreement at the European Council in December on asset freezes and other restrictive measures.

Since day one of this crisis, the UK has led the way in funding and shaping the international response. We have evolved our response as this incredibly complex crisis itself has evolved. There will be no end to the suffering until a political solution is found. The Syria conference, co-hosted by the UK and held here in London, was a pivotal moment to respond to help those people and countries affected. We seized the chance to offer the Syrian people and their children hope for a better future. The UK will now be at the heart of making that ambition a reality and keeping the international community’s promise to the Syrian people. That is the right thing to do for those suffering and, fundamentally, for Britain, and I commend this statement to the House.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

The Syrian crisis is the most pressing humanitarian challenge facing us at this time, and the Government are to be commended on co-hosting an important conference that has raised more than $10 billion for Syrian refugees. They are also to be commended on doubling our own commitment to more than £2.3 billion. The emphasis on education and jobs is entirely correct: we cannot allow a whole generation of Syrian children to be lost.

The Secretary of State will be aware, however, of the report by Concern Worldwide that reveals that a third of the funds pledged to Syria in 2015 had not been confirmed by December of that year. Can she say whether all the money pledged in 2015 has now been confirmed, and does she appreciate the hopes of the entire House that she will get other countries not just to match our generosity but to hand the money over? The wholly commendable efforts on Syrian refugees in the region belie the Government’s wilful myopia on the plight of more than half a million Syrian refugees here in Europe. It is true that the majority of Syrian refugees are in the region, and the situation continues to worsen. We all saw the television pictures at the weekend of tens of thousands of terrified Syrians waiting at the border with Turkey in response to Assad’s bombardment of Aleppo, but will the Secretary of State explain how much longer this country and the EU can expect Turkey to keep its border with Syrian open while at the same time we want to prevent refugees from transiting to western Europe?

The funds raised by the conference are vital, but it is vital, too, that this country shows willingness to take its fair share of refugees, including Syrian refugees. The UK has agreed to take, over five years, fewer refugees than Germany has taken in a month. The Opposition appreciate that this country has not signed up to Schengen, but does the Secretary of State acknowledge that the fact that we are not signatories to Schengen does not remove the moral responsibility that falls on us as part of the European family of nations, and does she accept that many people are surprised and disappointed that the Government have rejected the Save the Children campaign to take in just 3,000 child refugees?

The Secretary of State may well wish that these children had stayed in the region, but the direction in which the children chose to flee does not make them any less vulnerable. These children may not be in the part of the world she might prefer them to be in, but they are still lone children at risk of abuse, sex-trafficking and worse. She cannot behave as if there are two classes of Syrian child refugee: one set who stay in the region, whom she is prepared to help, but another class who have travelled to Europe on whom she turns her back.

The Secretary of State will have heard reports of the German Chancellor’s speech in Turkey today. Does she agree with Angela Merkel that the ultimate solution to the migrant crisis is safe and legal pathways for refugees? On the political process, I am glad to say that the Opposition support calls on all sides in the Syrian civil war to take steps to move towards sustainable peace negotiations. In particular, Russia must use its influence on the Assad regime. We entirely agree that it is unacceptable and illegal to use siege, starvation and the blockage of humanitarian aid as a weapon of war. We welcome the steps taken to freeze Daesh assets and other restrictive measures, for which my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition has called for some time.

All Syrian refugees want to return home. Immigrants and refugees, whether they go home or not, never lose that hope in their heart that they will return to the country in which they were born. But whether the Secretary of State would prefer it or not, there are half a million Syrian refugees here in western Europe. Together with my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, I visited the camp in Calais and met very many Syrian refugees there, many of whom, it seemed to us, had a legal right to come to this country, and all of whom were living in appalling conditions.

When the caravan of these international events has moved on, there will still be thousands of Syrians and other refugees, including an increasing proportion of women and children, living in appalling conditions in Europe, frightened, terrorised and at the mercy of people traffickers. We may all wish that they had not listened to the people traffickers, but this Government should be doing more not just for Syrian refugees in the region, but for the very many Syrian refugees here in western Europe.

[Justine Greening]

The hon. Lady raises the important point that it is vital that countries that came and made promises at last week’s conference live up to them. Too often at similar meetings in the past, countries have spoken warm words or set out promises that they have not lived up to. The UK will play its role by delivering on our promises, as we have in the past and will in the future, and by putting in place the necessary transparency to enable us to ensure that other countries live up to the promises they made.

It is wrong of the hon. Lady to say that we have not played our role close to home. Our strategy from the word go has been to tackle the root causes of the crisis that we have seen reaching our own shores, which is to make it viable for refugees to stay close to home in their home region as that is, overwhelmingly, the first choice of most refugees. It has been a failure to deliver on such promises and to provide the necessary resourcing that has led them over time to give up on that.

We are playing our role close to home here in Europe. It is the UK that has been working with UNHCR and the Red Cross, making sure that newly arrived refugees are effectively registered—although the hon. Lady will understand the challenges that poses on occasion—and making sure that they have the shelter, clothing, blankets and sustenance that they need, having finally made that often fatal journey. So we are playing our role.

The hon. Lady will know that we are resettling 20,000 refugees from the region directly. That is not only a safer route for people to get to the UK if that is where they need to be resettled, but it enables us to focus on the most vulnerable people affected by the crisis who need to be resettled—people who could never otherwise make the kind of journey we have seen other refugees making across Europe. In more recent days we have set out the work that we will be doing particularly to help children affected by the crisis. I am very proud of the work that the UK has done to put children at the centre of our response to the Syrian crisis. It was at our initiative that the No Lost Generation initiative was set up. It was through our help that UNICEF has been able to put safe zones in refugees camps to help link up children who have become separated from their family. It is the UK that has been ensuring the availability of the psychosocial support that children so often need, having been involved in such crises and undergone the experiences that they have, and we will continue to do that.

More broadly, the hon. Lady’s condemnation of Russia is correct. We can debate whether and how the UK’s support for people affected by this crisis is working, but we should all be able to agree that the routine flagrant, deliberate breaches of international humanitarian law that we see daily in relation to this crisis are unacceptable. A country such as Russia should be playing its role by pressing the Assad regime, which it is spending so much time and resource supporting, to allow the aid that is there in places such as Damascus to get down the road to the people who desperately need it. I believe that in time, as we look back on the crisis in the years to come, that breach of international humanitarian law will be one of the most telling aspects of it. People will ask themselves how it could have been allowed to go on.

Oral Answers to Questions

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

As the right hon. Gentleman knows, we have one of the strictest arms control regimes in the world. We should make sure that those processes are working effectively. My Department provides leadership in ensuring that when crises hit, the UK plays a leading role in making sure that the affected people have the adequate, long-term support they need. That is important because, as the humanitarian high-level panel said, 125 million people in the world now live through humanitarian support. That is the equivalent of a country, but they do not have a Head of State at the UN speaking up for them. That is why the rest of us need to work as hard as we can to make sure not only that they are listened to but that their needs are met.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State will be aware that the biggest humanitarian crisis we face is the refugee crisis. The House respects the work that the Government have done on the Syria conference and investing in the camps, but what about the refugees, particularly child refugees, who are not in the camps? We heard this week that for the first time since the crisis began women and children make up the majority of the refugees who are travelling to Greece. How many child refugees who are not in the camps do the Government propose to take?

[Justine Greening]

On the broader issue, the hon. Lady will know that the UK and UNICEF set up the “No Lost Generation” initiative, which has enabled half the children affected by the Syrian crisis to be in school. More broadly, on the relocation scheme we have put in place, this is the right way to help vulnerable refugees to relocate out of the region if they need to. We are working with UN agencies to identify the most vulnerable people and are talking to them about how that can be extended to unaccompanied children. The good news is that because of the hard work of agencies such as UNICEF, which are funded by the UK, the overwhelming number of children—more than 85%—who arrive in countries such as Jordan and Lebanon unaccompanied are reunited with their families.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Swayne]

As the Prime Minister pointed out, we have the most stringent and robust arms export regulations in the world. We have supported the UN Human Rights Council resolution, and we are committed to the investigation of every abuse or abrogation of international law.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

The Minister will be aware that Saferworld, Oxfam, UNICEF, and Save the Children take the position that DFID’s work in Yemen is being undermined by UK arms sales. How can the Minister continue to insist that a UK-replenished Saudi arsenal being dropped on Yemen is not an impediment to development?

[Mr Swayne]

As I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant), the undermining of our ability to deliver aid is a consequence of warfare. That warfare arises because of the violent removal of the lawful Government of Yemen, not because we have sold arms to the Saudis.

Zika Virus

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for International Development if she will make a statement on what measures her Department will put in place to support countries worst affected by the very serious Zika virus, which has now been declared by the World Health Organisation as a public health emergency, and if she will outline any plans to work with other Departments to mitigate the risks to British travellers.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development (Mr Nick Hurd)]

Mr Speaker, the Secretary of State is travelling and it therefore falls to me to do my best to answer the hon. Lady’s question. She raises an issue that is of great concern to many of our constituents.

The World Health Organisation is working with the Governments of the countries worst affected to lead the response to the Zika virus. We welcome the recommendations of the WHO emergency committee on Zika, and the UK Government are assessing our response. The hon. Lady will be aware that the UK has been at the forefront of global efforts to ensure that the WHO has the funding, expertise and systems to respond to emerging disease threats such as Zika. As the second-largest national funder of the WHO, the Department of Health met the UK’s £15 million commitment to WHO core funding in 2015, alongside political and technical support to strengthen the organisation and its preparedness. In addition, the Department for International Development made a discretionary contribution of £14.5 million in 2015. As part of the UK effort to strengthen global health security, DFID contributed an additional £6.2 million to the WHO’s contingency fund for emergencies, which can be used for the management of Zika.

In response to the hon. Lady’s question about the risk to the British public, the first thing to say is that the risk to the UK population from Zika remains extremely low. We have already taken a number of steps to ensure that the UK public are protected, but of course we are not complacent. In light of the WHO’s decision, we will review our approach both to action to mitigate the risk to the UK and to considering what additional support the UK could offer to the countries and regions affected. DFID is working with the Department of Health and colleagues across Government on our response at the highest level.

[Ms Abbott]

The Minister will be aware that money alone is not the issue. In the past four months alone, Brazil has recorded more than 4,000 cases of microcephaly—babies born with deformed small heads. The Minister will also be aware that the Olympic games will be in less than 200 days. More than 1 million tourists are expected to descend on Rio.

Does the Minister agree that research is a high priority? We urgently need proof of a causative link between the Zika infection and microcephaly, and then to know how the virus damages the brain of the growing foetus. Developing countries will need support for the mothers of the thousands of deformed babies to be able to take their family life forward. Does the Minister also agree that diagnostics, antiviral drugs and, above all, a Zika vaccine are essential?

[Mr Hurd]

I entirely agree with the hon. Lady that research is very important. We do not know enough about this disease, particularly the links to microcephaly and the other consequences to which she alludes. The UK stands ready to play a full part in upgrading our knowledge. Specifically, we recently announced a £400,000 Newton Fund Zika research project between Glasgow University and Fiocruz in Pernambuco, the hotspot of the outbreak. Scientists from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine arrived in Recife last week. We are currently looking at what additional interventions are required to reduce the spread of the disease and its impact on developing countries, particularly countries where DFID is extremely active and where there may be a risk of crossover.