Sustainable Development Goals Debate
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Mary Creagh
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Sustainable Development Goals
Mary Creagh Excerpts(9 years, 3 months ago)
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Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House recognises that 2015 is an historic year for development as the countries of the world come together to negotiate the binding climate change agreement at the 2015 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Sustainable Development Goals; believes it is unacceptable that more than one billion people still live in extreme poverty on less than $1.25 a day; notes that the effects of climate change will be most severe in some of the world’s poorest countries; further recognises that the UK has a leading role to play in these negotiations; regrets that the Government failed to bring forward legislation to enshrine in law the commitment to spend 0.7 per cent of Gross National Income on international aid as set out in the Coalition Agreement; further regrets that this Government has failed to support standalone Sustainable Development Goals on health and climate change; and calls on the Government to show global leadership on tackling the causes of poverty inequality and climate change.
This year, 2015, is an historic year for development. The countries of the world will come together at the United Nations in September to agree the sustainable development goals, and in Paris in December we will agree a framework to tackle climate change. These agreements would be priorities for a Labour Government. We have called today’s debate—the first since the debate on Burma in 2008—to set out the differences that we see between this coalition Government and Labour on these vital issues.
Fifteen years ago, a Labour Government led global efforts to tackle extreme poverty, which led to the millennium development goals. These goals have produced fantastic results. Every day, 17,000 fewer children die. Nine out of 10 children in developing regions now attend primary school and we have halved the number of children who die before their fifth birthday. In 2002, just 700,000 people received treatment for HIV. The last Labour Government helped to found the global fund to fight AIDS, TB and malaria. Today, 13 million people access life-saving HIV treatment. We cancelled debt, increased aid and outlawed cluster bombs, and when my right hon. Friend the leader of the Labour party was Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, the UK became the first country in the world to put into a law a target to reduce carbon emissions. Other countries, such as Finland, Denmark and Brazil, have followed that lead.
But, today, more than 1 billion people still live on less than $1.25 a day, so the new sustainable development goals must go faster to eliminate extreme poverty and, vitally, tackle growing economic inequality.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
I appreciate the call that the hon. Lady is making for UK leadership on climate and poverty issues. Does she recognise that her party’s support for things such as maximising oil and gas extraction in the Infrastructure Bill, agreed just a few days ago, is undermining the pledges she is now making to tackle climate change?
Mary Creagh
Not in the slightest. I will set out in detail tomorrow, on a visit to the Institute of Development Studies in Brighton, our plans to expand what we want to do, particularly in the area of universal health coverage. Perhaps I will bump into the hon. Lady on the pier down there.
There are three vital areas that Labour would prioritise to tackle inequality: universal health coverage, human rights and climate change. I will say more on those issues in a moment, but first I would like to look at this Government’s approach. We regret that the Government failed to bring forward legislation to enshrine in law both parties’ manifesto commitment to spend 0.7% of gross national income on international aid. It fell to Labour MPs and the good offices of my right hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Mr Campbell) to ensure that the landmark Bill that would do so was passed in this House.
Mrs Caroline Spelman (Meriden) (Con)
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way, but does she accept that trying to set out the dividing lines between the parties on the subject of international development breaks a consensus that has existed for a long time? I think the outside world looking in would fail to understand that it is this Government, whom she seeks to criticise, who have met the 0.7% target.
Mary Creagh
I have the greatest respect for the right hon. Lady, but she too led an Opposition day debate on trade justice in 2002—I read the report of it in Hansard only last night—so I shall take no lessons on having Opposition day debates on this matter from her.
Mary Creagh
I am going to make some progress.
There is nothing wrong with supporting the private sector and infrastructure investment in poor countries, but we Opposition Members have grave concerns about the lack of transparency over where this funding for private sector development is going. That area will account for £1.8 billion—nearly one fifth of the Secretary of State’s budget next year.
Sir Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) (LD)
Just before this debate, the Select Committee was taking evidence from the Secretary of State on precisely the issue of private sector investment, but not a single Labour member of the Committee attended the session.
Mary Creagh
Perhaps my hon. Friends were writing their speeches. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for East Lothian (Fiona O'Donnell) is planning to speak in this debate. I pay tribute to the work of the Select Committee, which the right hon. Gentleman chairs, and I shall quote extensively from some of his reports, if he will give me the chance.
Mary Creagh
I am going to make my point, and this will interest the right hon. Gentleman because it is a body that he set up. The Independent Commission for Aid Impact has been highly critical of the Secretary of State’s TradeMark Southern Africa programme. It found that an £80,000 illegal payment was made to the Government of Zimbabwe in breach of the Government’s own rules.
The Secretary of State for International Development (Justine Greening)
Let me point out that that programme was set up by the hon. Lady’s Government.
Mary Creagh
Shock, horror! The right hon. Lady’s multi-annual review in 2011 talked about that programme and found that it was working well. The payments I refer to were made between July 2011 and May 2013—on her watch. The commission said:
“We are…deeply concerned that…a private company is managing a £30 million DFID programme without any formal contract with…DFID.”
That is a direct quotation from ICAI. It details serious weaknesses in financial management, with 90% of all expenditure undertaken in cash, without securement or contract—for example, a $20,000 cash payment with a hand-written receipt from an off-the-shelf receipt book; a request for a $100,000 petty cash fund; and a request by newly recruited staff to be paid tax free, which is against South African law. As I say, the review of the capital budget that the Department carried out in October 2011 found that most outputs had been achieved, but after three years of the current Secretary of State being in charge, the third annual review found that DFID was not on track to meet its financial forecast—on her watch.
To her credit, the Secretary of State has shut down that programme, but similar problems persist elsewhere. ICAI’s report into DFID private sector spending published eight months ago found that it was
“impossible to identify how much DFID actually spends on private sector development…because it is not captured as a discrete category of expenditure in DFID’s financial system.”
That leads to the question: “If you don’t know where it’s going, how can you measure if it is working?”
The National Audit Office has criticised another private sector project—the Private Infrastructure Development Group. The NAO criticises the right hon. Lady’s Department’s decision to scale up PIDG funding from a total of £49 million in 2010-11 to £258 million in 2012-13. Her Department will allocate £700 million-worth of taxpayers’ money to that fund between 2012 and 2015. The UK now accounts for 88% of all contributions. The NAO criticises the fact that there was no change to PIDG’s governance and that the business cases for projects were not assessed by DFID’s quality assurance unit—despite the risks involved. The NAO concluded that DFID has inadequate financial control and oversight, lacks robust information and was unable to prove value for taxpayers’ money.
I share the NAO’s and ICAI’s concerns about where and how this £1.8 billion is being spent. I have put a series of parliamentary questions to the Secretary of State about where the funding for her strategic framework for economic development is going. I asked the right hon. Lady how the money would be ”targeted on economic development”, and how it would be
“allocated to different activities and countries.”
The Secretary of State did not answer. The public deserve to know if and how much of the money is being paid to the private sector directly. I asked the Secretary of State that question, only to be told:
“This information is not available in the form requested.”
Perhaps that reflected the concerns expressed in the NAO report. I asked how much of the £1.8 billion had already been spent; no answer. I asked what the purpose of the money was; no answer.
Justine Greening
The hon. Lady seems to be unaware that the £1.8 billion budget relates to 2015-16. We are not in that financial year yet.
Mary Creagh
A total of £700 million is being spent in one fund over three years, and the Secretary of State is unable to answer a single question asked by ICAI, by the NAO, or by me about where and how that money is being spent. Presumably—as in the case of the huge increase in the funding of PIDG—that is because she does not know. The Public Accounts Committee has now examined PIDG’s investments. Its report will be published tomorrow, and we await it with great interest.
Mr O’Brien
As I am sure the hon. Lady is aware, the amazing, incredible leadership of the United Kingdom, straddling both parties’ times in office, is much admired around the world. I happen to have just come back from speaking at an event in Davos, where our leadership, through a unity of approach across the House, was greatly admired because of our ability to get things done and our amazing achievements in relation to international development. The coalition Government have been no exception, in that we have always ensured that we include the other side. Is the hon. Lady not as saddened and disappointed as I am by the churlish nature of her motion and the tone that she is adopting? Surely we should act together to deliver the greatest possible public good internationally.
Mary Creagh
I make no apology for demanding transparency when it comes to where the taxpayer’s money is being spent. There is nothing wrong with working with the private sector. These are funds that were set up by a Labour Government. However, when funds are scaled up so quickly without changes being made to governance and oversight, the National Audit Office—not me—is concerned about where and how the money is being spent.
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)
I am sure the hon. Lady agrees that the coalition’s record on delivering the 0.7% of GNI is one of which we should be extremely proud, on behalf of the whole country. If our constituents are to have confidence in that spending, we shall need to see the maximum transparency and value for money. Instead of coming up with a litany of criticisms of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State—who I think has done a fantastic job—will the hon. Lady answer these questions? If she ever becomes Secretary of State, how many countries will she identify as an aid target, and what level of sign-off will she prescribe for her Department? How many DFID-run projects has she already visited, and how many projects does she expect to visit if and when she becomes Secretary of State?
Mary Creagh
That is very kind. Unlike many Government Members who discovered a new-found interest in development as soon as they were appointed to their roles, I have a long-standing interest in the subject. Let us start with my volunteering for Oxfam in Sri Lanka for two months in 1990. Let us move on to my visit to Rwanda and eastern DRC—
Mrs Spelman
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The title of the debate is “Sustainable Development Goals”, and Members have come into the Chamber to discuss sustainable development goals. We have heard from the hon. Lady for 15 minutes, with no discussion of them. A document produced by the Select Committee of which I am a member is tagged to the motion. It is entitled “Agreeing ambitious Sustainable Development Goals in 2015”. Surely, Madam Deputy Speaker, if the hon. Lady had wanted a DFID score card, that is what it should have been called.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
I appreciate the right hon. Lady’s frustration, but that was what Mr Speaker would call “not a point of order, but a point of frustration”. The content of the hon. Lady’s speech is not a matter for me, apart from the fact that she must stick to the title of the debate, which, so far, she has done.
Mary Creagh
I am grateful for that ruling, Madam Deputy Speaker.
I want to respond to the question asked by the hon. Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) about the projects that I visited as a Back Bencher. There was the post-genocide work that DFID has been doing in Rwanda. I have visited a Save the Children project in Lubumbashi. I have visited artisanal miners in eastern Congo. I have visited Panzi hospital for the victims of sexual violence—a subject that I know is very close to the heart of the Secretary of State. I visited Burundi—a country that is no longer in receipt of DFID funding—in 2009 to look at the Save the Children hospital there. In 2012, I visited Rumbek in South Sudan to look at the work of the World Food Programme, and last week I was in Geneva talking to the World Health Organisation and the global fund, UNAIDS and UNITAID. So I do not need any lessons about visits.
Mary Creagh
I am going to make some progress.
I want to talk about Labour’s priorities for the sustainable development goals. As I said, health is very important and is the bedrock of all human development. People in rich countries and poor countries alike are affected by disease outbreaks. Strong health systems build resilience. We have seen Ebola in west Africa overwhelm weak health systems, and as the party of the NHS Labour wants others to enjoy the protections we take for granted.
Mary Creagh
I wonder whether the right hon. Gentleman was listening. As I said, unlike the many Members on the Government Benches who have discovered a passion for these things in their roles on appointment to the job, I do not need to go on a visit to understand. I have been on those visits that I detailed, and I have been in this role for seven weeks so I hope the right hon. Gentleman will give me some credit for my long-standing interest in this area.
I will now give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy), if she wants to intervene.
Kerry McCarthy
The moment has slightly passed, but when my hon. Friend was listing the projects she has visited I was going to remind her that we also went together to Pakistan after the dreadful earthquake there and saw the relief efforts and the work DFID was doing.
Mary Creagh
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for that. I certainly remember one of the more hair-raising car rides of my life up to the mountains there and seeing the fantastic work that was being done in those areas.
I want to talk more generally now about our priorities. Universal health coverage would reduce inequality and would stop 100 million people a year falling into poverty. Figures from the House of Commons Library show that, unfortunately, this Government have cut bilateral spending on health in Sierra Leone and Liberia from £26 million in 2010 to £16 million this year. Four months ago the International Development Committee criticised DFID, saying:
“The planned termination of further UK funding to the Liberian health sector is especially unwise.”
Lasting health care systems are about more than the delivery of commodities such as vaccines and bed-nets, vital though they are. Despite the progress made over the last decade, HIV and AIDS continue to blight the lives of millions of people. Between 2008 and 2013, Britain gave £40 million to support the work done by the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, yet Ministers have slashed that support to £5 million for 2013-18— a massive 87% cut.
Mary Creagh
Perhaps the Secretary of State would like to explain why that cut was made?
Justine Greening
I really just wanted to ensure that the record was straight. This Government have spent more on health care in Sierra Leone in every year in government than the hon. Lady’s Government did. I will be specific: DFID’s 2009-10 annual report says Labour spent £11 million on health in Sierra Leone. This Government have consistently spent more than that in every year. Does she regret not spending more previously?
Mary Creagh
Well, my question to the Secretary of State is: does she regret cutting, and is she going to reverse her decision to pull out of bilateral spending in Liberia—yes or no? My figures are from the House of Commons Library, and I do not recognise the one that the Secretary of State has used. I have also joined them together; the combined total was £26 million for Sierra Leone—[Interruption.] Here is the answer, if the Secretary of State will listen and stop chuntering. The combined total was £26 million in 2010—[Interruption.] It is hard to listen when you are talking, I find. The combined total was £26 million in 2010, and it is £16 million today. That is a £10 million reduction. Perhaps she would like to write to me to set the record straight. We can have an exchange of letters; I am sure it is pretty dull for people to listen to this.
Ministers have slashed funding for the international AIDS vaccine; there has been a massive 87% cut. That cut is a short-sighted mistake if we are to invest for the long term in tackling those neglected diseases. I note that the Secretary of State neglected to explain why the funding was cut by 90% for that international research programme.
On human rights, we want women and girls to exercise their human rights free from the fear of violence, coercion and intimidation—
Mary Creagh
The Secretary of State will have her chance when she makes her speech.
We want girls to enjoy their education free from the threat of child or forced marriage. However, Tory MEPs voted against the European Parliament’s report on sustainable development goals and on the section on women’s sexual and reproductive rights. We want to tackle the economic conditions and supply chains that tolerate the obscenity of 168 million child workers. We want to ensure that children affected by conflict have the psycho-social services that they need and the right to go to school. We want members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities to be free to love and marry whomever they wish. We want the disabled to participate fully in society, and we want protection for indigenous peoples.
We want workers to enjoy decent work, decent pay and rest breaks, and to have the freedom to join a trade union. We must not have a repeat of the terrible Rana Plaza disaster. We will therefore reverse this Government’s ideological decision to stop funding for the International Labour Organisation.
Mrs Spelman
Will the hon. Lady acknowledge that Members on both sides of the House came together and succeeded in putting into the Modern Slavery Bill—which this Government have enacted—a clause on transparency in supply chains, precisely to deal with the exploitation she describes? Labour Members also supported that measure.
Mary Creagh
Absolutely, and I pay tribute to Members on both sides of the House for that. I believe that that was a Labour amendment, but it had cross-party support and we welcomed that.
Eradicating poverty will be possible only if we tackle climate change. If we do not keep temperature rises to below 2º C, millions will fall back into poverty. The Prime Minister says very little about his wind turbine these days. He is a prisoner of his divided party, which is split over whether climate change even exists. For Labour, climate change will be at the centre of our foreign policy and integral to our plan to change Britain.
There is a real opportunity to address climate change this year. The United States, the EU and, most importantly, China, are all showing a willingness to act. At the Paris summit in December, a Labour Government would push for global targets for reducing carbon emissions, with regular reviews towards the long-term goal of what the science now tells us is necessary: zero net global emissions in the latter half of this century. In addition, we must ensure that the sustainable development goals have a specific goal on climate change—something that the Secretary of State has repeatedly failed to back.
Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)
Having stood opposite the hon. Lady at the Dispatch Box, I know that her tone can sometimes be a bit abrasive. I know that she has been in her present role for only seven weeks, but could she not use this opportunity to say that she welcomes some of the things that are going on in relation to international aid, including some of the bilateral arrangements? Does she not welcome the continued spending of 0.7% of gross national income? Does she not agree that there are some good projects? Her tone today has been deeply divisive on an issue on which there has traditionally been great consensus in the House.
Mary Creagh
I am not saying that everything the Department for International Development does is bad; I am trying to point out—[Interruption.] No, that is a wilful misunderstanding of it. On the 0.7%, was the hon. Gentleman one of the Members who stayed here to vote that through? More Labour MPs were in this House for that than Conservatives and Liberals put together, and it would not have passed without Labour votes—and he knows it. The Government have had five years of Government time and Backbench Business Committee business time on a Thursday when nothing has been done.
Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)
It is entirely fair for my hon. Friend to be scrutinising and questioning Government policy, particularly on climate change and what position is taken into the sustainable development goals summit. Does she feel that a Prime Minister who said that we should “cut the green crap” is the right person to lead this country into crucial negotiations about climate change and the future of poor countries around this world?
Mary Creagh
I am afraid that the climate issue was used by the Prime Minister. Everyone remembers the hug a husky trip in 2006; I do not know whether that is one of those photos the Tory party attempted to delete from the internet, but yesterday I still managed to find a good few pictures of him doing that. He was certainly less enthusiastic about the issue in government.
With the right leadership, ours is the generation that can end extreme poverty, reduce inequality and tackle climate change. We can move to a world beyond aid and enable people to secure justice instead of charity. The year 2015 provides a unique opportunity for the world to think bigger and do better for ourselves, our children and the world’s poorest people. That is a thrilling opportunity and we must not let them down.
Justine Greening
We have worked really hard to ensure that we stopped funding programmes in countries such as China and Russia, which no longer require targeted development assistance.
Mary Creagh
The funding to Burundi was also cut. I do not know whether the Secretary of State has visited Burundi, but I have. Does not Burundi need assistance from the Department for International Development?
Justine Greening
Countries such as Burundi do still get support from the UK, but it often takes place through the global funds that we support—funds to support health, education or the work that we do on the humanitarian agenda.
Justine Greening
I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. He has huge credibility in the international development arena. He has been a Minister, and his work both then and now is hugely valued not just in this country but worldwide. He is absolutely right to say that there were a number of reasons behind the decision on Burundi. Rather than seeing a fact and then drawing her own conclusions, I urge the hon. Lady to dig a little deeper.
Mary Creagh
I thank the right hon. Lady for giving way; she is being very generous. The point about Burundi and other post-conflict countries is that, having a DFID office—or in this case a combined Rwanda-Burundi office—in that country means that it acts not just as a development partner, but a political one in knocking heads together and in dealing with some of the post-conflict factions that still exist in that country. We are talking about withdrawing from that country and only entering it through multilateral assistance. There is nothing wrong with tax assistance. We did all that in Rwanda, and it is an excellent part of development assistance. The point is that if we do not have someone on the ground in the country, we do not have the early warning systems. What happened in Burundi—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. The hon. Lady has already made her speech.
Mary Creagh
The right hon. Lady might have missed my point on human rights, but there was a point on women and girls and child marriage in my speech. She mentioned sustainable development goal 16. Can she explain why her Conservative colleagues in the European Parliament voted against that goal?
Justine Greening
The hon. Lady continues to seek division, which is regrettable.
Those goals have been welcomed by the NGO community, and the UK Government have said that we support the breadth and the balance of the open working group report. We recognise, though, that the post-2015 framework needs to have the universal appeal that made the MDGs so successful. Developing countries were able to take those goals in their entirety and integrate them directly in their national development plans. The deputy Secretary-General of the UN, Jan Eliasson, said clearly to me the last time we met a couple of months ago when he was in London that that was one of the unintended impacts of the MDGs—countries used them as their development strategy because they felt that they could work with them. That is why the UK has been strongly advocating a shorter, more inspiring and more implementable set of goals and targets that resonates with people around the world. We want to keep the breadth and the balance of the open working group’s goals and targets, but we want to ensure that we get a framework that can truly improve the lives of the poorest people in the poorest countries.
We know that, for the poorest people in our world, we cannot allow this discussion, process and debate to be kicked around as a political football. We should be steadily building consensus. In December the UN Secretary-General published his synthesis report “The Road to Dignity by 2030”. He called on member states to strive towards the highest level of ambition and he set out six principles that member states should strive towards: dignity, people, prosperity, planet, justice and partnership—working together. He also called on member states to look at targets and to ensure that these are measurable, implementable and in line with the level of ambition that we want to see. I have spoken to the Secretary-General on a number of occasions about the post-2015 framework and about the need to make sure that, like the MDGs, it is compelling and transformative. He is right that these principles must be taken forward in negotiations.
In his synthesis report the Secretary-General made a clear link between the post-2015 framework and the outcome of the climate change conference in Paris. I agree that the two are fundamentally connected and that 2015 is a unique year and a unique opportunity to bring the two agendas together. As I argued at the UN General Assembly last year, it is the very poorest who will be hit first and hardest by climate change. Our objectives for the Paris meeting are clear and ambitious. We want an outcome that delivers the ultimate goal of the UN framework convention on climate change, which is to avoid dangerous climate change by limiting the global average temperature increase to no more than 2° C above pre-industrial levels. We are one of the few countries arguing for this to be explicit in the SDG framework. The most cost-effective and reliable way to achieve that is through an international, legally binding agreement with mitigation commitments for all.
Our approach to the 2015 framework can support that in two ways. First, it will ensure that climate is truly integrated in, and demonstrably an integral part of, the final framework of goals and targets. Secondly, if we can secure agreement at the September summit, it will help to boost multilateralism ahead of the Paris meeting in December.