Kashmir: Increasing Tension

Preet Kaur Gill Excerpts

Tuesday 29th April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Falconer]

I thank the right hon. Lady for her questions. India is a friend to the UK, and we have been clear about the depth of our friendship in our response to this incident. She would not expect me to comment in detail on intelligence and security matters in relation to this attack, but I assure her that we are looking at it very closely. She is right that wherever terrorism is found, it is a threat to global peace and security, including in the UK. I will not comment further from this Dispatch Box on links between some of the groups that the right hon. Lady has mentioned, but I assure her that our security agencies take these matters very seriously, as she would expect.

The right hon. Lady asks important questions about the Indian high commission. As I said in my earlier answer, we will offer our full support. There is 24/7 enhanced protection outside the high commission, and it will be a top priority for the Government to ensure that no harm comes to any Indian diplomats or, indeed, any other diplomats here in the UK.

We are playing our role to try to ensure that tensions do not escalate. Many of us in this House are familiar with the tense and storied history between the two countries. We are friends to them both, and we do not want to see an uncontrolled escalation in tensions.

[Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op)]

May I pay my respects to those who have lost loved ones in the horrific terrorist attack in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir? My thoughts are with them at this devastating time. Many of my constituents have written to me about the escalation of hostilities here in the UK. Can the Minister say what conversations he is having with Indian and Pakistani counterparts to address this situation?

[Mr Falconer]

This escalation is unsettling for communities within the UK. British Pakistanis and British Indians are valued parts of our community, but we look to all community and faith leaders to spread the message that now is the time for coming together across religious and ethnic differences, not to play out the tensions between two states on the streets of the UK, and we will continue to send that message.

Israel: Refusal of Entry for UK Parliamentarians

Preet Kaur Gill Excerpts

Monday 7th April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I agree with that length of question as well.

[Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op)]

This is an unprecedented situation, and I pay tribute to both my hon. Friends the Members for Sheffield Central (Abtisam Mohamed) and for Earley and Woodley (Yuan Yang) for the manner in which they have conducted themselves. I have visited Israel on many occasions, and I have had the opportunity to live there. While Members of this House may have disagreements with the current Israeli Government, does the Minister agree it is essential that we enable delegations to visit the region? That is the only way that we listen, learn and are exposed to a wide range of views and perspectives.

[Mr Falconer]

I agree. There are many friends of Israel in this House, many of whom are disappointed by the events of the weekend.

Israeli-Palestinian Peace: International Fund

Preet Kaur Gill Excerpts

Tuesday 11th March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Steve Yemm) on securing the debate. I pay tribute to the thousands of Israeli and Palestinian peacebuilders, some of whom are here with us today. I thank them for their tireless and inspirational work, and the Alliance for Middle East Peace for all it does to give them a voice. They give us hope at a time when it is in such short supply. The past 18 months have been the most painful for the people of Israel and Palestine—on 7 October the worst massacre of Jews in one day since the holocaust, death and destruction in Gaza on an intolerable scale, and the torment of hostages held in chains for more than 500 days.

The ceasefire must continue to hold, the hostages taken by Hamas must be unconditionally released, and desperately needed aid must be allowed to reach innocent Gazans. Out of the rubble of the conflict, we must vow to create the conditions for peace. Our goal has to be a two-state solution, with a safe and secure Israel alongside a viable and independent Palestine.

How do we get there? First, we have to learn the lessons from the past. For decades, diplomats and politicians have invested countless hours in trying to achieve peace from the top down. Each effort ultimately failed. Why? Because neither community felt that it had a real partner for peace. Without public support, even well-intentioned leaders cannot impose a lasting peace from the top down. We know from conflicts such as the one in Northern Ireland, most notably, that diplomacy can make a lasting difference, not just as a result of a top-down approach but from a bottom-up approach.

I think of Middle East Entrepreneurs of Tomorrow, a pioneering summer school programme that has supported more than 800 Israeli and Palestinian young adults in learning computer science, social entrepreneurship and leadership skills. MEET is just one of hundreds of such programmes that have emerged since the signing of the Oslo accords. We know that they work. Just look at the data: 80% of participants in a dialogue project were more willing to work for peace, 71% reported more trust and empathy for the other, and 77% had a greater belief that reconciliation is possible.

I commend the Prime Minister for his leadership. He has consistently supported that different path and his commitment in December to convene a summit in support of civil society peacebuilding is a vital first step. The United Kingdom has a unique opportunity: our experience of peacebuilding in Northern Ireland, our world-leading development expertise and the UK’s convening power mean that this is an area in which we can provide real leadership. When speaking about why the Obama Administration’s diplomatic efforts did not succeed in 2014, former US Secretary of State John Kerry said,

“the negotiations did not fail because the gaps were too wide, but because the level of trust was too low.”

Will the Minister provide an update on the preparations for the United Kingdom’s summit in support of peacebuilding?

With the UK’s support in building peace from the bottom up by tackling the fear and mistrust that has only grown since 7 October, we stand a chance of learning the lessons of the past and making sure that the next effort at top-down diplomacy succeeds. We owe it to the people of Israel and Palestine.

UK-US Bilateral Relationship

Preet Kaur Gill Excerpts

Tuesday 4th February 2025 Westminster Hall

[Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John. I thank the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway (John Cooper) for calling this debate on the UK-US bilateral relationship. I listened closely to his speech and we agree on the importance of the UK-US relationship and our desire to build on those bonds.

Britain’s place in the world matters. After the needless fights and petty politicking of the last Government, which did so much damage to our relationships around the world, I am proud that our Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary have made reconnecting with our allies a priority of this Government. After the furore of the Northern Ireland protocol, the collapse of US-UK trade talks, and strains following Brexit, I am glad that we now have a Government who are ready to put the national interest, rather than party interests, first.

It was Winston Churchill who first described the UK-US relationship as “special”. For centuries, the relationship between our two nations has been one of collaboration, co-operation and enduring partnership. Together, we have defended the world from tyranny and two world wars, stood strong in the cold war, and for centuries worked closely towards our mutual security and prosperity. I put on record my congratulations to President Trump on his inauguration, and we look forward to working with him in the years ahead.

As the Prime Minister has said, we will continue to build upon the unshakeable foundations of our transatlantic alliance as we tackle the global challenges together. We have our shared language, close cultural exchange, strong ties in commerce, and the many links between our peoples through business, friendships and family. Indeed, President Trump’s mother was Scottish and I know he has always been very fond of our country. I am sure that the depth of friendship will continue.

The Prime Minister had a warm and constructive conversation with President Trump the other week, during which they discussed the economy. President Trump stated that they “get along well” and that the Prime Minister is doing a “good job”.

There has been a lot of noise around our relationship with the United States and the new Administration, much of it coming from the Opposition Benches. There have been, as there always will be, things that we disagree on. We clearly did not agree with Elon Musk’s outlandish attacks on members of the Government, but differences on single matters of policy do not diminish the deep and enduring relationship between us and the United States. I dare say that the previous Government disagreed with the Biden Administration on many things.

I regret to note that the Opposition really seem to be getting carried away, with Members seeming to suggest that the Government must choose between our relationship with the EU and our relationship with the United States. Last week, the shadow Business Secretary, the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Andrew Griffith), suggested that improving our relationship with both the EU and the US was akin to an attempt at

“making love simultaneously to a rhino and a sloth.”

Leaving aside why anyone would want to do either of those things, is it not exactly that destructive attitude that has caused so much damage to British businesses and UK trade over the past 14 years?

In these dangerous times, the idea that we must choose between our allies—that somehow we are either with America or with Europe—is wrong. Last year, the UK’s total trade in goods and services with the United States was £294 billion, and with the EU it was £822 billion. Our co-ordination with the United States on defence, security and foreign policy is indispensable, as is our co-ordination with Europe, our closest neighbours. Attlee did not choose between allies, nor did Churchill. The national interest requires that we work with both the EU and the US.

In the years ahead, the UK will again stand tall on the world stage. This Government’s commitment to international law, their commitment to growing our economy and free trade, and their work navigating the new, more challenging multipolar era are all worthy of Opposition Members’ serious engagement, not party political sniping. Our shared history with the United States, our close security and defence partnerships and our economic ties matter more than words. This Government will continue to invest in the transatlantic relationship in the years to come.

Oral Answers to Questions

Preet Kaur Gill Excerpts

Tuesday 30th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

The reason the Government were able to reduce the size of electricity bills for hard-working families was precisely because we are meeting our targets and will meet our international commitments. Britain’s international targets and commitments are enshrined in law as a result of the activities of this House. Internationally we are committed, as the right hon. Gentleman knows and as was set out to the House towards the end of last year, to spending £11.6 billion on ensuring that we meet our climate targets and produce climate finance. I would argue that that figure will be nearer £16 billion by 2026.

[Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op)]

5. Whether he has had recent discussions with his international counterparts on a strategy to reduce debt in the developing world.

[The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Mr Andrew Mitchell)]

The Government recently set out our commitments on developing country debt in our international development White Paper.

[Preet Kaur Gill]

The main mechanism to tackle the debt crisis, the common framework for debt treatment, is failing due to the low level of participation by private creditors who own around 40% of low-income country debt. Does the Minister agree that there is strategic need for the United Kingdom to take debt reduction seriously and change its approach, given the crisis in Africa and the growing role of China and Russia in the developing world?

[Mr Mitchell]

The hon. Lady is right to point to the considerable difficulties that countries are finding. Some 15% of low-income countries are in debt distress, and 45% are at higher risk of that. The African Development Bank says that debt repayments in 2024 are likely to be six times the level of 2021. That is why Britain is working with other creditors to secure debt restructurings, most often through the G20 common framework, but also through the Paris Club.

Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories

Preet Kaur Gill Excerpts

Tuesday 14th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

Yes.

[Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op)]

Gaza was facing a humanitarian crisis before 7 October. The Government cut funding to UNRWA from £50 million to £10 million. The clock is ticking. Hospitals are running out of fuel, food and water supplies are almost depleted, and until a large-scale humanitarian operation is in place, many more people will needlessly die. Will the Minister update us on what progress the Government have made to secure a humanitarian resolution through the UN Security Council?

[Mr Mitchell]

We are working night and day for humanitarian access. On the subject of support for UNRWA, we increased aid very substantially, as the hon. Lady knows, before 7 October. Since then, we have allocated £30 million of humanitarian aid and we will do more if it is required.

Freedom of Religion and Belief

Preet Kaur Gill Excerpts

Tuesday 19th September 2023 Westminster Hall

[Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I thank the special envoy, the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), for securing this important debate, and I thank all my colleagues in the all-party parliamentary group, particularly the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), for their work on the issue.

I will focus on the effects of social media on promoting misinformation, intolerance and inflammatory speech that challenges people’s right to freedom of religion or belief, especially in crisis areas. The danger of social media companies in that respect has been noted by the companies themselves. A Meta company worker said in 2019:

“We have evidence from a variety of sources that hate speech, divisive political speech, and misinformation on Facebook…are affecting societies around the world. We also have compelling evidence that our core product mechanics, such as virality, recommendations, and optimizing for engagement, are a significant part of why these types of speech flourish on the platform.”

That is partly why Labour has repeatedly warned that the Government’s Online Safety Bill may not go far enough in its focus on content rather than on social media platforms’ business models.

In 2021, many fake social media accounts pretended to be “#RealSikh” members of the community in India. A groundbreaking report by Benjamin Strick of the Centre for Information Resilience, reported on by the BBC, found at least 80 fake accounts, many using profile pictures of celebrities, posting divisive posts seeking to discredit Sikh political interests such as the farmers’ protests, often labelling them as extremist or claiming their infiltration by extremist groups. Benjamin Strick said that the aim of the network appears to have been to

“alter perceptions on important issues around Sikh independence, human rights and values”

Those accounts have now been suspended because they were fake. The danger of such information has led to religious and ethnic violence and tensions.

I took a close interest in the report at the time because many of those fake accounts also targeted me and other politicians. I could see how effective they seemed to be in generating a narrative and abuse that seemed to take on a life of their own. I have no problem with individual voters challenging me on x—it comes with the job—but I am concerned about politically motivated misinformation campaigns that appear to have money behind them and to be co-ordinating across platforms on a large scale. Areas of the media in which it is possible to buy political influence and distort debate are generally carefully regulated, but that is not the case with social media, which it is why it has become such a target for manipulation.

The network used so-called sock puppets—fake accounts controlled by real users, as opposed to automated bots—posing as independent people. Nikhil Pahwa, a digital rights activist, has noted:

“These 80-odd accounts will not necessarily make something trend, but with consistent posting, they try to discredit a point of view…This seems to be a sophisticated approach, and seems to be a part of a larger operation.”

The farmers’ protests and the decades-old Sikh independence movement were two discussion topics targeted by the network, with attempts to delegitimise both.

The same phenomenon has had incredibly grave consequences elsewhere in the world. As the United Nations found in Myanmar, hate speech and calls for violence on Facebook played a major role in fomenting the Rohingya genocide and later religious and ethnic violence in the country. The continued exile of nearly 1 million Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh is surely a testament to the seriousness with which we should be taking the issue.

Similar speech is reported to have greatly contributed to the violence and potential genocide in Tigray. Meta is currently facing a $2 billion lawsuit, backed by Amnesty International and filed in Kenya, for allegedly contributing to the violence against the Tigray community. Facebook has allowed the incitement of violence in the region for years, and although there are efforts to stop it, they have not been entirely successful.

As Internews Europe told the International Development Committee in evidence submitted to its inquiry on atrocity prevention,

“media, online and social media platforms with significant reach have been deployed as part of deliberate efforts to dehumanise particular ethnic or religious groups, disseminate grievance-based narratives and incite violence”.

His Majesty’s Government must do more. More must be done to enforce respect for FORB throughout the world, particularly in the United Kingdom and its partner nations. When we see persecution and hate still rife across the world, it is incumbent on all parliamentarians across the House to reaffirm our commitment to the values and principles set out in the 2021 G7 summit communiqué, which for the first time referred specifically to freedom of religion or belief. As the Prime Minister absconds from the role of international statesman that British Prime Ministers used to hold, failing even to show up at many of the international fora at which issues such as FORB will be raised, I hold out hope that his Ministers will take a stand for human rights in his stead.

Draft Commonwealth Development Corporation (Limit on Government Assistance) Regulations 2023

Preet Kaur Gill Excerpts

Wednesday 5th July 2023 General Committees

[Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am grateful to the Minister for outlining the new regulations.

I begin with some comments on BII’s role and objectives. The Opposition recognise the private sector’s important role in the development journeys of low and middle-income countries. The creation of new jobs and markets, especially for Africa’s young and fast-growing working-age population, the boosting of economic growth, productivity and tax receipts, and delivering innovative new products, services and infrastructure to meet the needs of poorer countries are all vital components of a genuinely sustainable development strategy.

Within that, I recognise the good work BII has been doing in supporting the delivery of the world’s first malaria vaccine, reducing pollution and deforestation in Malawi through investment in low-carbon building material providers, and scaling up access to off-grid solar energy systems for families and businesses that cannot access electric grid connections.

I commend all that good work, along with BII’s focus on Africa and its work on climate innovation and tech. However, we are here today to debate this amendment to the Commonwealth Development Corporation Act 1999, which would increase the maximum that the UK can funnel into BII by £3.5 billion.

We live in a time of intense converging global crises: the war in Ukraine, the global cost of living crisis, the sovereign debt emergency in Africa, record levels of conflict and displacement and hundreds of millions falling back into extreme poverty as a result of all those crises. The FCDO has slashed aid year on year, used the budget like a Government slush fund and funnelled billions into the Home Office black hole to deal with a self-made asylum accommodation crisis, so we have to ask the question: is channelling billions more pounds of scarce official development assistance into BII really the best use of Government resources?

First, let me be clear about that context. Investments through BII have a limited and specific role in Britain’s development policy if we are serious about SDG 1: eradicating poverty. Indeed, BII does not even use the standard World Bank definition of extreme poverty of having an income below $2.15 per day, instead using a higher threshold of $5.50. That shows that its work is less able to reach the very poorest and most marginalised. Even then, BII does not provide disaggregated data on the quality of jobs its investments create, including wages relative to local averages or poverty lines.

Does the Minister think efforts should be made to make that basic information publicly available, and is it something he has requested and had access to in advance of shareholder meetings? Does he share my concern about the low number of jobs BII is creating for women? By its own count, only 28% of the new jobs it created in 2021 were for women. Although I recognise the work done through the 2X Challenge, do the loose and optional objectives it set out not illustrate precisely my point that a DFI is often not the best vehicle to deliver on many of the Government’s development objectives?

That is not to say that I do not commend the progress that BII has been making on some of these points since it came under fire from the Independent Commission for Aid Impact in 2019, but there must be an honest conversation about whether this is the best use of what is left of the development budget. Given those constraints, what claim can BII make as a better investment for poverty reduction than all the other bilateral programmes being cut?

Secondly, on transparency and accountability, in last year’s Publish What You Fund DFI transparency index, BII scored 26.5 out of 100, behind its equivalent organisations in the US, France, the Netherlands and Germany. Before this Government destroyed it, the Department for International Development took the top spot among bilateral donors in the international aid transparency index for eight years in a row. The Minister used to take transparency and value for money very seriously when he was Secretary of State, and he is asking to plug more billions of pounds into an organisation that provides only basic information to the taxpayer about its work. On environmental, social and corporate governance, accountability to communities and financial information, BII came joint bottom in the transparency index. At the International Development Committee, it has been called out for its reliance on opaque financial intermediaries and for its failure to mobilise investments in projects that the private sector and other DFIs are not funding anyway.

I noted that the Minister said in a recent Chatham House speech that he accepts many of the criticisms on transparency, and he would set out a road map of commitments to improve BII’s performance. Would it not make sense to have a clear plan to improve things before handing over more billions of taxpayers’ cash? For example, one thing that other DFIs have are mechanisms that allow communities to hold them to account. The German DEG has one; the World Bank International Finance Corporation has one too. Could BII consider developing one? What efforts is BII making to ensure that the intermediated private funds that it invests in are not domiciled in tax havens, and can the Minister explain how he expects to restore Britain’s reputation as a development superpower while funnelling money into opaque private equity funds and financial intermediaries at the expense of UK-branded development assistance and aid?

These questions are not just an abstraction. Last week, I hosted a briefing in Parliament with Oxfam about this new report into DFI investments into for-profit hospitals, where I heard the story of Francisca Wanjiru, a Kenyan woman whose mother died at one of the for-profit hospitals in which BII is invested. For years, Francisca has had to live with the haunting fact that her mother’s body is lying locked inside a freezer at the Nairobi Women’s Hospital mortuary and she cannot get her out. For years, the hospital has refused to release her mother so that she can be properly laid to rest, because Francisca is too poor to pay the hospital fees that racked up when her mother fell ill.

I was deeply moved by Francisca’s story. She accrues another 500 shillings in fees every day that she cannot afford to pay for her mother’s release, and such situations are not uncommon, as Oxfam’s recent report “Sick Development” outlines. The report describes patients blocked from access or bankrupted by eye-watering hospital bills that should never have been charged—patients even imprisoned in hospitals for being too poor to pay. These hospitals are often charging fees that are simply out of reach for ordinary people to meet, and Oxfam has found some hospitals charging more than someone’s annual average income for basic maternity care. Not only is that clearly not helping the poorest people in those countries, but in some cases it is making accessibility and affordability worse. In Uganda, Oxfam found a hospital that BII invests in where prices increased by an incredible 60% in just four years.

The report contains some harrowing stories, and it raises serious concerns about the development impact of some of these investments and BII’s due diligence. Why has it taken years of careful research by a non-governmental organisation to shed light on something that basic functioning oversight mechanisms would have surely picked up and put an end to years ago? I hope that the Minister can tell us what action is being taken in response to the report, and whether, as BII’s sole shareholder, the Government will rule out any further investments in for-profit hospitals.

It is surely uncontroversial to ask that the significant sums of public money that we are talking about should not be invested in businesses that are undermining British policy objectives. Private hospitals are not the only example. There has been the Bridge schools scandal. There has been BII’s flagship billion-pound investment in DP World, the Dubai-owned parent company of P&O Ferries, which summarily sacked its British workers, frogmarched them out of their place of work and rehired foreign staff to replace them on poverty pay of around £1.82 an hour last year. There have also been its investments in the China National Investment & Guaranty Corporation, which is linked to the belt and road initiative.

I was concerned to hear the Minister’s response at the International Development Committee in response to some of these concerns, that BII should simply be left to “get on with it”. That is a remarkably lax response to the risk that millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money is being funnelled into projects that undermine UK policy objectives. At a time when needs are increasing and money is tight, it is surely more crucial than ever that taxpayers’ money is spent as effectively as possible, and I hope today that the Minister can give me some answers to the concerns that have been raised.

Lastly, I wanted to ask the Minister about what is driving UK development policy, as it simply does not make sense to me. Why, one might well ask, is BII the only untouchable domain of UK development spending, when we are scaling back climate finance, when bilateral aid to Africa has been parked, and support to desperate Afghans fleeing the Taliban, who now comprise the biggest group crossing the channel on small boats, has been cut to ribbons?

I have a theory. At the last spending review, 2021, the FCDO was given a £2.4 billion target to spend on financial transactions over three years—a new category of Government spending that was introduced by the coalition Government a decade ago. These financial transactions notionally involve the purchase of an asset and are excluded from the Government’s fiscal rules on the deficit and borrowing. I understand the attraction: after crashing the economy and with inflation soaring, the Chancellor wants to channel more and more money through a mechanism that does not register as day-to-day spending but, as things stand, the target set at the spending review would mean that at least £1.2 billion—around 10% of the total official development assistance budget—must be spent on financial transactions next year. That leaves Ministers with few options but to repeatedly recapitalise BII.

The difficulty is that that is a terrible way of deciding policy. The Treasury might like it, but how will it deliver impact for the very people that the ODA budget is meant to reach, not least when as much as 40% of the bilateral budget is now being spent within the United Kingdom instead of abroad? BII is already limited in what it can invest. Often, the challenge is that in the very poorest countries there simply are not enough businesses with the capacity to absorb the kind of money that BII wants to spend. Meanwhile, war rages in Ukraine, the global economy tightens, a sovereign debt crisis in Africa grows and record numbers of people are displaced by conflict, instability and disaster.

BII has a limited role in tackling many of these challenges, even where it is integral to creating the fertile investment environment, new markets and new job opportunities in the private sector in low-income countries—never mind its own mandate to turn a profit. Despite lofty promises to repair the damage this Government have done to our international reputation in development, accounting trickery rather than impact still seems to be driving Government policy, and it is all of us who are invested in a safer, greener, fairer world who will lose.

I will not divide the Committee on the draft regulations, as I recognise that the Government have already almost breached BII’s financial limit, and I will not seek to frustrate planned investments in things like Ukraine’s economic recovery. However, I hope the Minister will respond to my concerns—I know he will.

Transparency and value for money must be restored to UK ODA spending. A Labour Government will ensure that taxpayers’ money is spent with the respect it deserves. We will undertake a root-and-branch review of BII, including its mandate, transparency reporting and governance arrangements, to ensure it is supporting and not undermining UK policy objectives. Britain once led the way in principled, poverty-focused, transparent global development. Under the next Labour Government, we will make sure it does so again.

Draft African Development Fund (Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative) (Amendment) Order 2023 Draft African Development Bank (Sixteenth Replenishment of the African Development Fund) Order 2023

Preet Kaur Gill Excerpts

Monday 3rd July 2023 General Committees

[Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am grateful to the Minister for outlining the African Development Fund orders. We will not oppose them. I welcome the support they show for tackling poverty and food insecurity, creating new jobs and opportunities to meet the demands of Africa’s young and fast-growing population, and tackling the climate crisis.

Since 2019, Africa has been hammered by the converging crises of the pandemic, the climate crisis, debt, inflation and conflict. An estimated 55 million people on the continent have been pushed into extreme poverty since the onset of the pandemic. In 2021, nearly half a billion people in total were living on less than $1.90 a day. In that context, it is essential that we do what we can to prevent the current crisis from derailing long-term development gains.

Our financial support via the African Development Bank, with its significant financial clout, strong regional identity and deep knowledge, is one excellent means of doing that. Not only has Publish What You Fund ranked the African Development Bank’s sovereign lending as No.1 in transparency out of 50 global development institutions but the bank is also well aligned with the UK’s objectives and was green in its 2020 review.

While public-private infrastructure finance volumes in sub-Saharan Africa have stagnated over the past decade, the African Development Bank has punched above its weight, far outspending other multilateral development banks in support for infrastructure partnerships with the private sector in recent years and giving donors more bang for their buck. During the new funding cycle, the African Development Bank will focus on two strategic priorities: governance, capacity building and sustainable debt management in recipient countries; and developing sustainable, climate-resilient and quality infrastructure. As we heard from the Minister, it will also focus on empowering women and girls as a condition for achieving inclusive and sustainable development. Through those investments, the total replenishment will help to connect 20 million people to electricity, benefit 24 million people through agricultural improvements, provide access to water and sanitation for 32 million people and improve transport infrastructure for 15 million people.

The bank’s work over the next three years will complement long-standing investments in regional growth and infrastructure, offer a sustainable alternative to non-concessional Chinese lending and make headway on the long road to economic recovery from the pandemic and the worsening food security crisis, all of which are priorities that we support.

In that context, I must express some disappointment that we are again seeing a significant cut to UK financial support in this area; it is down nearly £200 million. The African Development Bank has done great work in the closely linked areas of climate adaptation and food insecurity in recent years. It has prioritised high-impact investments in water resource management and climate-smart agriculture, while also holding true to a model that puts countries in the driver’s seat of their own destinies. Will the Minister say whether we should take these funding cuts as proof of the former International Environment Minister’s comments on Friday? Do we have a Prime Minister who is “simply uninterested”, is it true that

“efforts on a wide range of domestic environmental issues have simply ground to a standstill”

and are the Government

“absent from key international fora”?

They are breaking their promises on international climate finance, hoping to leave a tab for the next Government to pick up.

The African Development Bank estimates that the continent needs $7 billion to $15 billion a year in adaptation finance to meet this accelerating challenge, yet ICF, international engagement and domestic commitments were conspicuous in their absence in Government announcements at the Paris summit. Can the Minister explain whether the Government remain committed to delivering the £11.6 billion in international climate finance that they promised in 2019? How and when will that be delivered? Will the Minister explain why the Prime Minister was absent from the summit while more than 100 world leaders were in attendance at a time when, by his own admission, there is growing anger at the international community’s failure to help the most vulnerable countries adapt to a climate crisis that they did not create?

Will the Minister say something specific about the absence of an announcement on the remaining half a billion special drawing rights that the United Kingdom promised but is yet to deliver? As he may well know, the African Development Bank has proposed an innovative new vehicle for the SDRs to be lent as hybrid capital. That would mean that every 100 million of SDRs recycled to the African Development Bank will be multiplied to increase loans to vulnerable African countries by up to 400 million. In effect, the African Development Bank proposes to leverage SDRs as capital to mobilise more lending funds so the SDRs are never spent; rather, they will be held as capital in the bank’s SDR account at the International Monetary Fund. Has the Minister looked at that proposal, and will he comment on it? Why has the delivery of the 100 billion SDRs promised at the G7 in Carbis Bay in 2021 been so achingly slow?

Finally, the previous replenishment round included an element of performance-based funding dependent on positive results reported at the mid-term review. Will he clarify how much was disbursed or held back at that point, and what support has the UK provided to the bank to recruit sufficient staff in key areas, such as environmental and social safeguards and fragile and conflict-affected states, in recent years? What efforts, if any, have the Government made to encourage closer working, better information flows and better-informed oversight between the bank and Government country teams?

On the sovereign debt crisis in many African countries, I must start by noting the incredibly positive news that, three years after its default, Zambia has finally agreed a deal for debt restructuring with straight creditors, including China. The £5 billion deal will provide crucial fiscal space for its Government to serve its people, 16% of whom live on less than a $1.90 a day, although billions owed to private lenders still needs to be tackled.

The situation is an ongoing illustration of the importance of the multilateral debt relief initiative agreed at the Gleneagles G8 summit 19 years ago. That was an outstanding example of what British leadership on the world stage can achieve and one of the proudest legacies of the last Labour Government. It has since had a transformative impact on many poor countries, freeing up their Governments to invest billions of pounds in public goods, such as health systems, climate action and education, that would have otherwise been spent servicing unsustainable debts. Will the Minister tell us how much debt the UK support has enabled the African Development Bank to cancel over the recent accounting period? What expectations does he have in relation to the orders? We welcome our latest contribution to the African Development Fund’s portion of the multilateral debt relief initiative, and will not divide the Committee on the order.

Many of the development gains that we have made in Africa in recent decades are currently at risk of reverse. We can, however, choose to forge a way to a more positive future with the expertise, influence and financial muscle of institutions such as the African Development Bank. For Labour, the power of co-operation is unmistakeable. We can choose to turn to each other when confronted with global crises, rather than turning inwards. We can choose to modernise our approach to international development. Learning from each other, we can and must address the world’s greatest challenges together.

Oral Answers to Questions

Preet Kaur Gill Excerpts

Tuesday 13th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op)]

More than 29 million people across Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and South Sudan are now experiencing catastrophic hunger levels following a fifth failed rainy season in a row. It is also the fourth year in a row that this Government have cut aid to those countries. Oxfam has estimated that one person is likely to die of hunger every 28 seconds between now and July. Can the Minister please explain how he is restoring Britain’s leadership in international development while decimating our support to some of the very poorest people on earth?

[Mr Mitchell]

First, let me say that British leadership has been exercised at the two big conferences that took place in Saudi Arabia and Qatar. British expertise and technical know-how is ensuring greater resilience and adaptation spend to drive up the ability to survive these crises when they take place next. If I may say so, the hon. Member must not diminish the extraordinary support and leadership that Britain is giving across the horn of Africa. The figures we have announced are preliminary figures, as I have said. We will react to the crisis—that is one of the things we are able to do—and those figures take no account of the tremendous support that British taxpayers are giving through the multilateral system.