Queen’s Speech

Lord Crisp Excerpts

Thursday 22nd June 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Crisp (CB)]

My Lords, as described by many noble Lords today, enormous changes are under way in the world, accompanied by many dangers and risks. Moreover, as many noble Lords have said, we need to redefine UK foreign policy and reshape our place in the world—and, of course, determine how best to manage the risks and take advantage of the opportunities provided by these changes.

I will attempt to deal with only a small part of this vast canvas: the bit concerning the development agenda. In doing so, however, I note a profound point made by the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury. Like the noble Lord, Lord Judd, I noted the most reverend Primate’s warning about the fact that our external presence and actions need to be built on values that are lived out in what happens within our own country and society. This is not the time to discuss the injustices, inequalities and fractures in our own society that have been so tragically illustrated by recent events. However, the point is well made that our domestic and foreign agendas and actions should coincide and that they can and should influence each other.

I also note the importance of networks—a point which, when the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, was speaking, reminded me of the earlier Select Committee report on the UK’s soft power. As I recall it, the report said that one of the key things in the future for the UK was being the best-networked country in the world. We need to build those relationships and have those networks with everyone in the world—in Europe, the Commonwealth and elsewhere.

It seems to me that those two points are enormously important when we turn to development. As a number of noble Lords have said, we have a great recent tradition of development, and I, like others, am delighted that the 0.7% target has been maintained into this Parliament. Originally I had some concerns about a minimum spending commitment because of the risks of inefficiency. However, I think that the election campaign, where this policy became an issue in a number of places, revealed how important it was that this political commitment was made and that the target has been secured and will continue.

The other important thing that came out of the election was that we need a new way of talking about international development. Like the noble Lord, Lord Collins, I noted Priti Patel’s comments about helping to create a world with justice, equality, jobs, peace and security. This is not just about charity, compassion and looking after other people, and nor is it just about government action; it is also about community action. Something very positive is fed back into the domestic agenda from the development agenda. When people get together around the charities in which many of us are involved concerning areas of development globally, this is very unifying and feeds back into our own country in very positive ways.

As I said, this is not just about charity and compassion; rather, it is more about what I tend to think of as global development or co-development, where we and our partners gain from the processes of development, and I shall give two examples where there are very direct benefits to the United Kingdom. One concerns malaria. Malaria No More recently published a report looking at the impact of malaria on the world. I should perhaps declare an interest in that I wrote the foreword for it, but it made the interesting point that 14% of global trade is with countries that have malaria and that those countries lose something of the order of 1% of GDP every year, cumulatively, because of the impact of malaria on their populations and people’s ability to be productive citizens. That means that the growth of these actual and promising trading partners of ours is restricted, and that has a natural knock-on effect on our society and our growth. Indeed, the UK has the largest number of imported malaria cases in the world. Malaria is an issue for us in the UK. It is not just about being nice and supportive and helping other people; it has a wider impact on our society.

My second point is one that I will come back to with another illustration in a moment. We need to approach global development or co-development with a degree of humility. I see this particularly within the health field, where we have a lot to learn from working with our partners overseas, just as we have much to teach. There is a great expression which goes, “Everyone has something to teach and everyone has something to learn”, and that is profoundly true in development, as I will illustrate in a moment.

Finally, I come to two instances on which I would be grateful if the Minister could manage to get answers for me, although this is not his portfolio. The first is health partnerships. Over the last few years there has been a DfID programme in the region of £30 million supporting partnerships between UK hospitals, organisations and health institutions and those in other countries—in Africa, Asia and elsewhere. These have been enormously valuable, and an evaluation of the programme by DfID last year identified the clear benefits to the UK. Individual doctors and nurses taking part in these partnerships were coming back having seen different things, having thought about different things and having had to do things without all their normal equipment—returning, if you like, to first principles in how they worked. They found it refreshing and it has fed back into training and development in the UK. That scheme came to an end at the end of March. There had been a lot of discussion about trying to make sure there was not a gap between it and a successor scheme. We heard many promises before the election about a new and extended programme coming our way. Will the Minister find out for us the plan for this? When will a new partnerships for health programme of this sort be relaunched?

The second area I shall touch on is nursing. In the previous Parliament I co-chaired the All-Party Group on Global Health, which had the involvement of a number of noble Lords here, including the noble Baroness, Lady Cox. We looked at the development of nursing globally. In doing so we came to three very simple conclusions, and that if you did something to promote and develop nursing globally you would address three sustainable development goals. The first is improving health. Nurses are everywhere. There are 23 million of them. They are half the workforce. They get to places other people, including doctors, do not get to. Secondly, you would also be empowering women. I note the very important point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Tonge, on contraception and abortion, but there are other aspects as well. There is a clear demonstration in a number of countries that nursing is a route for women’s empowerment as they become not only more educated, but more economically active as a result. There are some direct benefits from that.

Thirdly, as demonstrated by a recent report from the UN on health employment and global growth, employment in health systems in low and middle-income countries leads to direct economic benefits. There is a triple impact here from supporting the development of nursing: improved health, promoting gender equality and strengthening economies locally. My question for the Minister is: does the Department for International Development recognise the pivotal role nurses have in this? If so, what is it going to do to support it?

I conclude by coming back to the larger point on the narrative. It is fundamentally important that we not only change how we talk about international development, but drop the word “international”, because that makes it sound as though it is just about other people, as opposed to global development and co-development —another approach and another narrative that indicates that we are in this together, that it is not a zero-sum game and that supporting our partners is also supporting us.