Water, Sanitation and Hygiene: Sustainable Development

Lyn Brown Excerpts

Tuesday 17th October 2023 Westminster Hall

[Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

It is a genuine pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Latham, and I am well aware of your expertise in this issue. I also thank the hon. Member for Hendon (Dr Offord) for securing this debate. He is clearly a dedicated and knowledgeable member of the all-party group for water, sanitation and hygiene. He is right: we know that when communities have comprehensive access to clean water and sanitation, it mitigates the spread of diseases, reduces maternal and infant mortality, slows the rise of antimicrobial resistance, reduces poverty and so much more. It is part of a prevention-first approach, not just in international development, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) said, for our health security here in the UK. It is a real shame that the Government’s cuts saw aid for WASH fall by more than three quarters between 2018 and 2022.

In most households without running water, women and girls are responsible for fetching it. Every hour a girl spends fetching water is an hour not spent in education; and, for the reasons stated by the hon. Member for Hendon, when a school does not have clean water, that is a massive barrier to girls’ inclusion in education. Every hour a woman spends fetching water is an hour not spent earning a livelihood.

Why am I focusing on women and girls? It is because, as hon. Members have stated and repeated, women and girls globally spend 200 million hours each day collecting water. When the journeys are too lengthy or dangerous to risk, families can be left reliant on unsafe water or none at all, which we know leads to terrible illness and needless death. Preventable diseases caused by inadequate water, hygiene and sanitation are sadly all too common, with 1.4 million lives lost each year. Almost half a million children under the age of five die of diarrhoea every year, and many of those deaths are caused by unsafe water or a lack of sanitation. Imagine being a mum who has successfully delivered a healthy baby, only to have that life snatched away because the clinic lacks clean running water. It is the cruellest outcome, but sadly one that is all too common around the world.

In December 2021, the Government published a very welcome approach paper on ending the preventable deaths of mothers, babies and children by 2030. I ask the Minister a very simple question: does he think that goal will be met? How much progress does he think has been made over the two years since the publication of that paper? Perhaps he could also say a little about the work his Department is doing to ensure that the particular needs of women and girls are reflected in both the design and the implementation of WASH programmes.

I am sure that the Minister and I agree that WASH systems can have so many positive impacts when done right. They can underpin global health security, which impacts positively on our citizens too: if we cannot ensure that health clinics around the world have water and sanitation, we cannot minimise the risk of superbugs and infectious diseases coming to the UK; if half the world are not able to wash their hands, we cannot slow the rise of antimicrobial resistance. Right now, one in four people cannot wash their hands at home, and half the world’s healthcare facilities do not have even basic hand hygiene services. This impacts on the health of the entire world—not just on the health of impoverished communities, but on the health of the UK too—so we need a solution for those mums whose children cannot survive, and for us.

The solution goes beyond installing water pumps. Whole-system approaches are needed, where WASH is incorporated into health facilities and accompanied by information campaigns. System building will require significant long-term investment in institutions and infrastructure, and working with communities: in a word—partnership. Is the Minister confident that the FCDO has retained enough country-level technical expertise in WASH to enable genuine, respectful partnerships, and does he feel that the information about FCDO plans and budgets is being given to our in-country partners early enough so that they can make the most effective use of funds?

There are, of course, challenges in many places most in need of better WASH, including poor infrastructure and weak governance. I would be grateful if the Minister could say a little about his approach to managing those challenges because—let’s face it—many of those countries in need have fast growing urban populations who put pressure on water systems, often including large numbers of people displaced by violence and hunger.

In February, we heard that earthquake victims in some shelters in Aleppo were without clean water, and up to 150 people were having to share a single toilet. Syria has the highest population of internally displaced people in the world, so it can hardly be a surprise that today 7.6 million people in Syria are in acute need of WASH services.

In Cameroon—where 1.1 million people are internally displaced, and there are almost half a million refugees and asylum seekers—over 1 million people badly need support with clean water and sanitation. In shelters and camps that do not have WASH facilities, disease can spread quickly. Both Cameroon and Syria have had serious cholera outbreaks.

Clearly, if more displaced people and refugees have clean water, the spread of diseases across borders will lessen. Ultimately, this is about supporting the conditions that enable people to live with security and dignity. To me, that is what international development is all about—actually, I think that is what politics is all about.

This issue is about looking ahead, and thinking about what we can do now to head off the rise in resistance to antibiotics and even the next pandemic. As we have heard, antimicrobial resistance already impacts patients in the UK, and will affect us more and more over the coming decade. The challenges will not go away, so I say gently that I was a bit disappointed that the Deputy Prime Minister did not mention water, sanitation and hygiene even once in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly last month.

How can we tackle health threats that affect us in the UK unless we work in partnership across the world to improve access to clean water and sanitation? We are some way off meeting our sustainable development goal of universal access to safely managed drinking water, sanitation and basic hygiene services by 2030. To achieve that goal, we would need a fourfold increase in current rates of progress. I also add my words to the concerns expressed by colleagues today about depriving the people of Gaza of their basic human right to water.

We in this Chamber and in this Parliament need to get real. In no way will we see universal access to WASH without meeting the threat of climate change. The Minister knows that UK leadership on climate change is expected at COP28. I therefore finally ask him— I know he has been taking copious notes of all my questions—what he will do to secure strong global action, and recognition that WASH and climate vulnerability are strongly linked. That is a building block in cutting poverty, improving global health security, securing our own population’s health and building gender equality. Our own communities and those around the world need to see action on this agenda now.