Water, Sanitation and Hygiene: Sustainable Development

Patrick Grady Excerpts

Tuesday 17th October 2023 Westminster Hall

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Latham; as others have said, it is very appropriate that you are in the Chair. I congratulate the hon. Member for Hendon (Dr Offord) on securing the debate, and I am proud to serve as a vice chair of the all-party parliamentary group for WASH, which he and the hon. Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) so ably co-chair. I also refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests regarding a visit to Malawi earlier this year with the APPG on malaria and neglected tropical diseases.

Malawi is a country very close to my heart. There is a popular saying in that country, “madzi ndi moyo”: water is life. That probably encapsulates everything we have heard in this debate. As the hon. Member for Putney said, lots of interventions and policy areas are often cited as key to sustainable development and ending poverty, but access to clean, safe water is inarguably right at the very top. A human being can survive several weeks without food but only days without water. Access to water is a basic human right, and yet 2.2 billion people go without ready access to safe drinking water, and more than half the world’s population do not have access to safe sanitation. We take access to clean water so much for granted here in the west—particularly in this country, where it falls out of the sky with such frequency—that is can be hard to comprehend just how difficult life can be without access to safe water.

If water is life, the inverse must be true. Lack of access to water deprives people of life—sometimes quite literally, with 13% of all deaths among children under five attributed to inadequate water, sanitation and hygiene. If unsafe water does not kill, it certainly makes life much more difficult. Water-borne diseases cause terrible sickness, particularly diarrhoea and fluid loss, as the Chair of the International Development Committee said. That can make recovery from illness and the ability to retain nutrition from food even more difficult. Experiencing such illnesses in childhood can have long-term consequences for mental and physical development, which reduces life expectancy and life chances.

Lack of access certainly impacts quality of life: as we have heard, 29% of schools globally do not have access to clean water. I have taught in some of them. About 443 million school days are lost every year because of water-related diseases. As others have said, that disproportionately affects women and girls. Girls are more likely to miss school because of a lack of sanitary facilities—frankly, that is as true here in the United Kingdom as anywhere else in the world—and it is women in developing countries who bear the largest burden of water collection needs, as the hon. Member for Hendon said.

Water Aid estimates that more than 77 million working days could be freed up for women if there were universal access to water and sanitation. The hon. Member for Putney spoke passionately about the difference that that can make. Again, I have been in exactly the same situation; I have travelled to villages and communities in Malawi and other parts of Africa, where water has transformed the lives of the whole community, particularly empowering women and allowing them to assume leadership roles.

The climate crisis is also increasingly experienced as a water crisis. In many places there is either too much or too little or it is too contaminated. That is not just in developing countries. In the United Kingdom, we are experiencing both floods and droughts, and the situation puts massive pressure on our sewerage system. Where efforts are made, benefits can be seen by all, and the potential for benefits can be predicted.

Earlier this year, I and other members of the APPG on malaria and neglected tropical diseases had the privilege of visiting Malawi. We met people in communities where trachoma had been eliminated, thanks to the adoption of WHO’s SAFE strategy: surgery to treat blindness; antibiotics to clear infection; facial cleanliness and hand hygiene to reduce transmission; and environmental protection to stop the infection spreading. Malawi has now been declared a trachoma-free country—something that many other countries in that part of the world aspire to.

As we have heard, the WASH APPG published an important report earlier this year—I took part in some of the evidence hearings—that demonstrated how WASH interventions as simple as cleaning hands and hospitals with soap and clean water can decrease demand for antibiotics, break that chain of infection and remove the opportunity for resistant diseases to become dominant. The hon. Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup) spoke of the importance of cleanliness in hospitals in particular.

A few months ago, Lord Boateng hosted a really inspiring event, appropriately enough in the River Room, celebrating the work of Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor, a charity that he is very closely involved with. It works to improve the delivery of clean water to increasingly densely populated areas of towns and cities in developing countries in Asia and Africa. Many stories were featured of lives transformed as a result of putting in sometimes quite complicated and sometimes very simple infrastructure. Again, that has a transformative effect on people’s lives.

The Scottish Government are investing, again, in Malawi in its Water Futures programme, supporting Malawi’s National Water Resources Authority and the Malawi Environmental Protection Authority to map, monitor and enhance that country’s water infrastructure.

I can see that the Minister shares the enthusiasm and inspiration that many of us do on this matter, and it is clear from this debate that water, sanitation and hygiene flow through the development agenda. Making sure that people have access to clean, safe water and a water infrastructure that protects them against floods and droughts helps to unlock so many other aspects of the sustainable development goals. We know that there will be a wider debate on progress towards those goals later in the week. I do not know whether the Minister for Europe will respond to that debate with the same enthusiasm with which he is gearing up to respond to this one.

Questions arise for the Government about how they can support the kind of positive interventions that we have heard about today and what action they will take to overcome the many challenges that remain to ensure that everyone around the world has access to water, sanitation and hygiene. We have heard about the level of public support for these kinds of interventions that exist here in the UK. That needs to be reflected in the White Paper when it is published and it needs to be heard more clearly, as the hon. Member for Putney said, at the highest possible level when the Government make representations on these matters on an international level.

The Government’s own statistics show the dramatic reductions to WASH funding since the ODA cuts were announced. Many of us said at the time that effective aid cannot be turned on and off like the taps that we all take for granted. Government cuts have a long-term impact, so even if funding is slowly being increased and bilateral aid is being increased in some countries, that does not change the fact that there has been a loss of capacity and a loss of progress resulting from the previous cuts. That will not be easily undone.

I do not think we can allow the debate to conclude without addressing the question of access to water in Israel and Palestine—as the Chair of the International Development Committee did—and particularly at this moment in Gaza. Denying people access to water is a fundamental breach of their human rights. Cutting off water supplies to hospitals in Gaza will condemn to death innocent people who have nothing to do with the terrorist atrocities perpetrated by Hamas. The Government of Israel must not use the denial of civilian access to water as part of siege or any other military tactics. I hope that the Minister will echo that statement.

Water is life and, in this part of the world, all too often we take it for granted. The Government have to do more—much more—to make sure that everyone has the access they need to water and to the life that it brings.