Sudan

Debate between Geoffrey Clifton-Brown and Stephen Pound

Thursday 28th April 2011 Westminster Hall

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

Education is particularly important. Without it, one would find it difficult to get out of the present situation. We have not heard much about gender equality in today’s debate, but education is particularly important for women because they are often the ones who not only do most of the work in these developing countries but are denied their rights the most. Like my hon. Friend, I am keen to ensure that DFID pays great attention to education.

Let me divert for one sentence, Mr Walker. I have stuck to the script so far, but I would like to provide an example. Pratham, a charity in India, has got 20 million boys and girls into education, and that is one of the greatest things that any non-governmental organisation on earth can do.

As the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire mentioned, the fifth area that needs assistance, training and expertise is the security and judiciary services. The security services must be educated to understand that they are now operating under a democratic regime, which requires proper scrutiny and accountability. On the judicial side, it is important that proper police courts and prisons are set up so that the rule of law can be maintained and we do not let the southern state revert to a lawless, squabbling load of tribes.

Finally, the other issue that needs addressing is health. Even in Juba, there are virtually no hospitals. If the health system is virtually non-existent in the capital, there must be no trace of it in the rural areas. In a poor country such as this, the health indices are inevitably very low. This is an area in which the international community could rapidly produce some sort of rudimentary health delivery system and start to meet the aspirations of the people.

We need to get the whole issue of democracy up and running. At the moment, 94% of the MPs come from the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement and the other 4% come from a breakaway part of the SPLM. We must educate those MPs to understand the need for opposition parties. I sometimes wish that we did not need opposition parties here. Nevertheless, we cannot have a proper democracy without opposition parties. The essential job of the Opposition is to hold the Government to account.

[Stephen Pound]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

The hon. Gentleman will now make a frivolous remark. I will give way if he is not making a frivolous intervention.

[Stephen Pound]

If all Members of Parliament were as emollient and hypnotic as the hon. Gentleman, there would be no need for dissent or different parties, because we would be as one under his intellectual sunshine.

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[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Hove (Mike Weatherley). I want to tell him that in Uganda, which is just to the south of Sudan, the Madhvani family have now built their fifth tractor factory. As the hon. Gentleman will know, that family were expelled from Uganda back in 1973, and they are now looking to build a tractor factory further to the north.

It was a pleasure to hear from the hon. Gentleman. I think that we heard today the first trumpet call for the twinning of Portslade with Juba. Bearing in mind the traditional tensions that exist between east and west in Hove and Brighton, perhaps there is an appropriate linkage to which he can bring his expertise to bear. It is good for us to hear about the contribution that the Sudanese community makes in our country.

It was a genuine pleasure—I mean that sincerely—to sit at the feet of the hon. Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) and hear, as ever, his master class. He may be biologically related to a former Speaker of the House, but he seems to have within him the blood of Herodotus, although I must say that even Herodotus might have cavilled at the idea of the self-regenerating serpent. I believe that earthworms have that ability and that on occasion, if they are in a good mood, slow-worms can manage it, but the sinuous, slippery serpent is a creature that I have never yet observed regenerating itself—but who knows? I must say that if anyone can enlighten us, it is the hon. Gentleman. I recall his contribution during a speech made by the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, the right hon. Member for Richmond (Yorks) (Mr Hague), who had suggested that the then Prime Minister, Mr Blair, should send his Chancellor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), to Sudan because of what had happened the last time a “Gordon” had visited Khartoum. The hon. Member for The Cotswolds had to explain to a number of the younger Members exactly what that reference meant. It is a pleasure to hear from him, especially when he is imparting such in-depth knowledge.

The hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson) has given us yet another expression to go away and cogitate on: the “difficult to resolve” list. Many a night we must sit at home and think about the ever-extending, ever-longer “difficult to resolve” list. In the context of this afternoon’s debate, what is particularly difficult to resolve—it has been referred to by virtually all speakers—is the issue of the generation of oil in the south of Sudan, its transmission to Port Sudan and its onward transmission. What the hon. Lady did not say, albeit probably out of generosity and kindness, is that there is a fair degree of empirical evidence that not all the value of that oil is reaching those from whose wells the oil is produced.

That is why the role of NGOs is important, and particularly CAFOD, which works so well and strongly in the region. What we must have in Sudan is not only people from northern Europe saying, “This is how you should do it; this is how we would do it; and this is how we suggest you should do it,” but people on the ground in villages in those parts of the country that are not normally visited. They must not only give the example of good governance, but witness, observe and report back, and reveal the reality of what is going on in those areas. That is absolutely crucial.

There is a fledgling nation—a new nation—as we have been told. We all wish that new nation Godspeed, but a new nation needs help. A baby cannot live by itself for quite a few years. It needs to be supported and helped, so we have to give our support.

The hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) delighted us all with a marvellous image of him meeting a group of senior southern Sudanese and trying to persuade them that he represented the British Government. It is hardly surprising that they thought he was French. For a moment, I wondered whether they suspected, “Is this the Polish mission?” Nevertheless, the fact that he has gone to the region so many times is very much to his credit.

Having said that, the hon. Gentleman’s words about Clare Short, the former Secretary of State for International Development, should not pass without comment. She made a specific point of saying that the Department for International Development was not an example of trade following the flag. She said that the Department was not something that existed to act as a stimulus for British trade, and that it was not a sort of export credits guarantee scheme, nor a trade investment body. She said that it was specifically supposed to be a “clean hands” organisation. Many times I went to see her in her office at DFID and she always used the same expression: “My people were the colonised, not the colonisers”. When I used to beg her to do a bit more about tea planting in Sri Lanka and northern India, she said, “No, what we want to do is to help people, in many cases without them even knowing that we are helping them.” That may be a tad naive in terms of realpolitik, but we can imagine what she was trying to do. The alternative is the Chinese approach, when everyone knows that the action being taken is not philanthropy, generosity of spirit or a case of somebody waking up in Beijing and saying, “Let us extend the glorious hegemony of Chinese industrial growth to those who need it the most.” We all know—the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham certainly knows—that there is rather more to it than that.

We do not get much good news in the world. It does seem to be that all around us the gloom gathers, but there is some good news in southern Sudan.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

Before we move off that point about aid, when DFID promotes a project, and particularly an infrastructure project, it is right that it should promote the fact that the project is British. When I have been around the world, I have seen the wretched European Union signs showing that EU aid has been given, and in little tiny letters it says “and DFID”—the words are so small that they can hardly be read. Everybody then thinks that the project is an EU project and nobody has any idea that it is a British DFID project. We should proclaim our generosity around the world. That is not a political point; I just think that we should do that.

[Stephen Pound]

That would be rather a good subject for another debate. I rather delight to see in Donegal signs saying that a road was built by the European Union. That is absolutely wonderful. It cheers me up no end, both as a passionate pro-European and as someone with a large number of relatives in Donegal.

I would have thought that what we are doing in this country is not a rerunning of the role of the Royal Navy in the 19th century. This process is not about a direct linkage between the wealth of this nation and future trading opportunities. By all means, badge those projects that we support, as we already do, particularly in India and in the largest recipient of DFID aid, which is a country right next to southern Sudan. We already badge those projects, but let that not be all there is to it. Let us try to bring a little Christian generosity and say that it is more important that we give the gift than sign the card.

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[Stephen Pound]

I entirely take on board your strictures, Mr Walker.

One difficulty is that Britain has not had entirely clean hands over a long timeline. Britain is inextricably linked with the past, and it is a great tragedy that the shadow of the past lies over us. Many would say that that is all the more reason to take such action, but let us never forget that the great poet of empire coined an expression that became part of the common currency when he said:

“ere’s to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, at your ‘ome in the Soudan;

You’re a pore benighted ‘eathen but a first-class fightin’ man”.

That typified people’s attitude to what was then Sudan and Egypt, which was going to be not just the biggest country in Africa, but by far the biggest.

I am acutely aware, Mr Walker, that we are here to talk about a specific subject, so I shall return to what we can do in Sudan.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

rose—

[Stephen Pound]

Before I do so, I give way to the hon. Gentleman.

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[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

On the aid that we might give to Sudan, it is worth noting in passing that the United States Agency for International Development, which is the largest aid agency in the world, is much more clever than DFID at making sure that its contracts go to US businesses.

[Stephen Pound]

Like many hon. Members, I have seen great sacks of grain and bales of bottled water being delivered to places, covered in stars and stripes. I support the emotion that drives that, but I am slightly worried about badging to such an extent. By and large, this should be about global humanity rather than national self-interest. If that is absurdly naive, so is CAFOD, which is probably one reason why my right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr Clarke) and I have such sympathy with and respect for its work.

One problem that we currently face is the Lord’s Resistance Army. It is an issue that simply cannot go away. As we know, it is not just a southern Sudanese issue; it affects also the Central African Republic and the DRC. It is a completely out-of-control, non-hierarchical militia, in many cases staffed by forced soldiers—often child conscripts—that commits the foulest and most appalling crimes. There has to be a way to do the two things that are necessary. The first is to stop the supply of child soldiers—those brutalised conscripted children—into this appalling group. I am not sure what to call it—we cannot use the word “army”—but it is almost a heavily armed mob. The second thing is to divert the energy from that force and to persuade people that there is sufficient safety in their home areas for them to return, and that they do not always have to sleep with an AK47 under their pillow. That will be incredibly difficult.

I have mentioned CAFOD, and I do not want to embarrass my friends there too much. However, in the western equatorial state, about 100,000 people are displaced—just imagine that number of people, in a country the size of Britain. It is a vast number, and the CAFOD people are doing an immensely good job, certainly in the diocese of Tombura Yambio, where most of them are working. We must support that work.

Although there is an interesting debate about the honesty of individual nations when it comes to assisting, advising, helping and supporting, I think that we would all agree that even the noblest nation sometimes does not have the same reputation as some of the best NGOs. When I see what the NGOs have achieved on the global scale, I often feel that their work is more sustainable and more widely respected. I profoundly hope that we can continue the beyond-symbiotic relationship that exists between DFID and the various NGOs—CAFOD, Caritas Internationalis, Christian Aid and many others—because that seems to be the way forward.

Above all, we have a new nation taking the first step of its life, blinking in the sunlight. In a couple of months, this new nation will take its first tottering steps and, if it appears to be falling, we will have to be there to offer a hand, to offer support, to offer succour, and to offer refreshment, advice and assistance. Whether that is through DFID or CAFOD, I know not, but I profoundly hope that it comes from the heart.