House of Commons Hansard Debates for 26 Jun 1990

Ms. Dawn Primarolo (Bristol, South) : No one can doubt the scale of the crisis facing the third world and all of us. It is a crisis affecting the environment, health, housing, agriculture, food, famine and debt. There is no room in this Chamber or any hon. Member's heart for complacency or self-congratulation on what we have done to date to tackle this massive task.

Like many hon. Members, I have constituents who are active in world development and aid. When they hear us arguing about how much money we spend, they answer that that money is but a pittance in comparison to the massive transfer of wealth and resources from the south to

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the industrialised north. If we were to repay but a tiny proportion of that money, the miniscule current aid budget would dwindle into insignificance.

The Minister made one point that I was shocked to hear, although I was not too surprised, when she said that we would not continue to pour British taxpayers' money into countries that had not learnt the lesson that socialism does not work. Aid is supposed to be based on the principle of sustainable development in the poorest countries of the world. That is its prime objective. The vast majority of the poorest people in the world are women.

I had not intended to speak about population control, but I must say that it is an inappropriate solution to world poverty. It is seen by many as a way to reduce the populations of the poor. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd) said, the people in the north, the industrialised countries, are consuming considerably more. We fail to recognise the link between poverty and people's need for large families to have some chance of survival. Many people would like to see millions of dollars being invested in population control even though dreadful and horrific damage has been caused to the lives of women in third-world countries by such programmes. That money would be better invested in establishing basic health care structures in villages, towns and cities throughout the world. Birth control is based on the woman's right to control her fertility and to make decisions about her life. Nobody should assert that we should force population control on people as a way of dealing with the problems that we face. I sincerely hope that such a course will not be proposed in the debate.

The document entitled "Environment and the British Aid Programme" is strong on rhetoric and weak on action. I appreciate what the Minister says, but we do not seem to have grasped the basic problem, which is that bad environments are the result of poverty and cause poverty. Aid programmes should be directed at identifying ways in which we can provide resources so that people can determine their own future without fear of exploitation and intimidation, whether by the economic and foreign policies of this country or any other or by the might of a multinational company. The document does not say enough about reducing the levels of carbon dioxide, the problems of CFCs and the general problem of global warming which will devastate the agriculture and the development of other nations.

The vast majority of poor people are women, and Britain's aid programme is harming such women in the third world. It does not recognise their unpaid work in the home, in the fields and in the community. They grow, buy and prepare food. They carry out cleaning and fetch water, firewood and household goods. They care for the young, the ill and the elderly. Such work is essential for everyone's survival, yet it is not classified as productive. Women's contributions as workers, farmers, traders, thinkers and carers is central to sustainable development. Their contribution is taken for granted, and they seem to be invisible to economists and most politicians, and unfortunately, they are not considered in many development plans.

Britain's aid is decreasing in quantity and quality. Each year, less than 20 per cent. of the total aid budget is spent on development projects for the world's poorest people. As we have heard, Britain's aid is increasingly being used to promote British exports and to further the

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Government's foreign and economic policies. Some 80 per cent. of the total aid budget is not deemed by the ODA itself to be relevant to women, yet women make up 60 to 80 per cent. of the agricultural work force in Africa. About 50 per cent. of those who care for animals are women, and all women are involved in food production and precessing.

Most aid programmes aimed at improving local agriculture are directed to assisting men, even though women are central to the ownership of smallholdings and the work in them. Women get a tiny proportion of agriculture scholarships and are excluded from credit facilities through straightforward discrimination and lack of collateral and income. It is a vicious circle, because sustainable aid is propagating the very problem that it claims to be addressing and attacking.

Women have the right wherever they are in the world to education, health, employment, food and shelter, as does every poor and not-so-poor person in the world. They have the right to participate in debates and to shape the future of their communities. Any aid policy which does not achieve that profoundly conflicts with the aims of sustainable aid. Women's position in society and in the world is crucially linked to the environment.

Much has been said about environmental projects that have been undertaken and about the IMF and the World bank and the ODA's relationship with those organisations. In The Guardian last Friday, nine projects--just nine--were selected to demonstrate how aid is damaging the environment. I presume that they are not the only ones. I give just one example in conclusion. It is about the African forest and the national forestry scheme in the Cameroons which is part of the TFAP. The article says that the programme is

"alarming environmentalists. The plan for Cameroon, completed in 1988, envisages that the country could become the most important African exporter of forestry-based products from the start of the 21st century'."

Those programmes are not about involving people in shaping their future ; they are about making them dependent on yet another cash crop that will tie them further into the debt crisis. That is profoundly wrong and evil. None of us has any right to be complacent, and I hope that we will do all that we can to ensure that our aid programme is liberating, not devastating.

9.21 pm

Mr. Jim Lester (Broxtowe) : The hon. Member for Bristol, South (Ms. Primarolo) spoke from the heart. Those Conservative Members who are present when England is playing in the world cup--there is no score after 60 minutes--also reveal a great deal of heart in that we want to take part in this critical debate.

The hon. Lady talked about women. I cannot follow her criticisms precisely, because virtually ever conference to which I have been, every scheme that I have seen enumerated and every area of development assistance from the developed world now involves women and women's participation. The real problem is caused by the standards of the developing world and the way in which it sees and treats women rather than the way in which we try to reach out from the developed world with schemes to assist them.

Action Aid programmes in the Gambia have deliberately targeted women. They have deliberately

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created gardens for the ladies, setting up their own committee to produce better food for the community and a market economy in which to sell their extra produce down the line. The whole focus now is on women and women's involvement, because their critical importance has been recognised. I am sure that the ODA and many of the schemes that it has put forward have that as a central element, along with the environment.

So many of these debates tend, as has been said, to start off on the wrong foot on the basis of the motions in which one side says that everything is wrong and the other that everything is right. I often suspect that the truth lies somewhere between the two. That is true of today's debate.

The suggestion in the Opposition's motion that ODA funds could ever be raised sufficiently to tackle the immense environmental problems of the third world is a mirage. There is no way in which ODA funds will in themselves meet the tremendous environmental challenges that we face now and will face in the next century.

Equally, the suggestion that the ODA should use those funds in an environmentally conscious and better way is something that we do applaud, and that is a fact. That approach was begun by my right hon. Friend the Minister's predecessor and has been continued. That is an essential element in the way in which we develop environmentally conscious schemes in the transfer of international resources. As we move towards 1992 and the Heads of Government United Nations conference on the environment, we must establish benchmarks for the next century. We should think through the roles of all forms of resource transfer--whether they involve technology, the major United Nations institutions, the World bank, IMF, the European development fund, the cumulative effect of ODA funds across the developed world, or the response within the developing countries themselves--and not pick on the one particular aspect of the ODA's own aid budget. The integration of efforts to overcome the major problems that have been spelt out is a task to which we should all apply our minds. With that proviso, I agree that the ODA's budget should be increased. It is effective, and one sees its good effects in different parts of the world. It is logical to argue that, given the same conditions, twice the budget would be twice as effective in terms of the people that aid would reach and the programmes that could be assisted. Our programmes are very successful in assisting the poorest people and the poorest countries of the world in an environmentally conscious way.

We must press for that element in the transfer of resources to be increased. I know that my hon. Friend the Minister would welcome it if the Treasury could be convinced of that. My right hon. and hon. Friends and I have fought, often with our votes, to increase our development programme, and would like to see it increased still further. However, the scale of funding required in terms of technology transfer and the global environment is considerable. Many of us support the idea of a global fund that would assist developing countries to measure up to changes, and the emergence of that point of view at Bergen caused the Americans to back off the joint communique .

The hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd) was critical of power stations, but I fail to comprehend why we should pick on them as symbols of western degradation. If

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the hon. Lady had ever been caught in Khartoum when the power station had broken down and the supply was cut, she would know what it is like for the 6 million people who live in that city. Everything comes to a halt. The heat is intense and the effects are dramatic. Factories stop producing and cotton is no longer spun. We built the original power station in Khartoum, and only restored it so that it would suffer no more brown-outs, to help the economy there. If any economy needs help, that one does--and it has started to recover. As to criticisms of the aid and trade provision, its share of the budget is tiny, being only £60 million out of £1.6 billion. The Foreign Affairs Select Committee examined the budget and acknowledged that, under international rules, it had to come under ODA control. We accept that it is one way of assisting British industry and developing countries to obtain the goods that they need. If the hon. Lady thinks that the ATP budget should be scrapped, perhaps she will explain how the environment will be improved if a French, Italian or Japanese company installs precisely the same facility instead. I do not see that there is any direct relationship to the environment. My hon. Friend the Minister and others firmly believe that the ATP should not serve as a slush fund for British industry. Other countries, particularly the French and Italians, use their aid budgets, even though they may appear to be a bigger proportion of GNP, much more successfully in promoting their own industries. I suspect that we are rather more puritan in that respect, and we should remain so.

There are two imperatives for sustainable development. One, which is sometimes misunderstood and is not given sufficient priority is the development of human resources in the developing countries, through education pro-grammes and health. I agree with the hon. Member for Clydebank and Milngavie (Mr. Worthington), who spoke about population, and said that, unless the population were educated, it was difficult for the people to appreciate the sheer scale of the difficulties caused by excessive population growth in an environmentally unfriendly situation. We want to develop human resources and we also want environmental integrity.

One of the critical points that my right hon. Friend the Minister made was that we have to have the willing participation of host countries. It is very patronising to hear people talking about "our" rain forests, as if they belonged to us. They do, in the sense that our economy is global, but if the Brazilians talked about "their" coal mines when they were referring to mines in this country, we should be angry. They are not our rain forests, but a part of the world ecology which belong to the country which is sovereign. As my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Mr. Arnold) mentioned, unless we have the co-operation of host countries, the prospects for change are difficult.

Opposition Members have accused us of supporting dictatorships or restrictive regimes, but absolutely the opposite is the case. The World bank and the Foreign Secretary have made it clear that democratic accountability and good government are two of the essentials to ensure that aid transfers function. For example, Burma had had a dictatorial Government for the past 40 years, and not only has it achieved gradual growth of poverty, in a country which is rich in natural resources, but there has been one attempt to overthrow the Government. Burma

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proves that, without legitimate democracy, poverty increases and environmental damage also increases, and it is almost impossible to stop it.

For example, next-door Thailand has a democracy, and popular pressure has caused them to be more environmentally conscious and to stop plundering forests. What has happened? The SLORC military Government in Burma have granted licences to Thai loggers, who have moved into the Burmese forests and are now extracting trees at three times the rate that they were cut down before, including seed trees, which is environmentally degrading and is almost impossible to contemplate. No amount of aid could possibly help that situation because the developed world has withdrawn its aid programme from Burma, as a mark of its complete indignation and rejection of the human rights record and the standards that the Burmese Government have established. Unless we can establish basic human values and accountable democracy, we cannot begin to operate sustainable aid or protect the environment.

I am getting all sorts of signals, but I understood that I had a few minutes more before the Front Bench spokesmen speak. I shall not mention commodities and population, but I must raise two other issues--first, debt. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary made a welcome statement, that we must reconsider debt and especially the debts owed to the Bretton Woods institutions by African countries. We must consider a 10-year moratorium of debt repayments to recreate a breathing space during which we can solve their problems. The second issue is military expenditure. The United Nations Development Programme report on human values has carefully given a league table of military expenditure in the developing world. It is clear that many developing countries spend a higher proportion of gross national product on military expenditure than on education, on health or on matching and working with resource transfers from the developed countries. That call comes not only from me--I am not being patronising--but from the UNDP and the various other institutions and from the people of those countries that seek an end to excessive military expenditure to prop up regimes that would be otherwise unsustainable.

Mr. Jeff Rooker (Birmingham, Perry Barr) : Does not the hon. Gentleman realise that the United Kingdom is the world's second largest arms supplier?

Mr. Lester : Of course, but that does not make the fact that some countries spend excessive amounts on arms any more welcome. I am calling for a reduction in military expenditure, and it should be reduced because the risk, and hence the necessity for such expenditure, is diminishing every day.

My last point concerns public debate and public awareness. We need to raise the level of public debate in our constituencies and across the country because if we do not, it will be very difficult to bring about changes--to transfer resources and to increase the ODA's budget. In a Harris poll taken for the Centre for World Development Education and the Commonwealth Trust, 86 per cent. of those questioned said that they wanted more news about developing countries. We must meet that need.

The hon. Member for Cynon Valley mentioned southern

non-governmental organisations. As a result of the intiative taken by my right hon. Friend the Minister,

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we have managed to establish for the first time a formal north-south quadrilogue so that we can now participate fully on a pan-European basis--across the countries of the Council of Europe and across eastern Europe--in a debate between non-governmental organisations, Governments, local government and Parliaments. We now look forward to 1992 and to a restatement of the views expressed in the recent BBC television programme, which was a brave attempt to promote public education and to discuss the problems of the environment and sustainable development--the real challenges of the future. We are now part of a system that will facilitate the work of southern NGOs in partnership with our own NGOs. It will facilitate the work of local government in terms of twinning. It will facilitate the work of Parliament and it will facilitate Government schemes to promote the essential development education without which we cannot proceed with the policy changes that we all seek.

9.37 pm

Mr. Peter L. Pike (Burnley) : I shall greatly curtail my remarks so that my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) has a chance to speak for a few moments.

This is an extremely important debate, in which we have brought together the two most important challenges that face Britain and the rest of the world in the final decade of this century--the need to tackle the problems of the developing nations and the need to tackle environmental problems. In both cases, worldwide action is needed. It is right that the subjects should have been linked in the motion because they bear a close relationship to each other.

A few weeks ago, I was in Mozambique for a few hours. I saw thousands of people who had left their land and I saw agricultural land lying derelict as a result of the civil war and strife that have tragically afflicted that country for so many years. I saw many people suffering from starvation. I clearly remember the young child who came up to me with what I thought was a doll in her arms ; it was actually an almost lifeless baby brother or sister. Pictures of those who suffer such conditions, which are repeated elsewhere in the world, have a tremendous effect when they are shown on television, but when one sees such things in real life, they mean far more- -perhaps more than anything else. If we can really justify the amount of overseas aid that we give at present and if we believe that we should not give more, we ought to be ashamed of ourselves. Our record brings shame on Britain and on the Government.

We must do considerably more. We have recognised what needs to be done to tackle the environmental problems that have arisen in this country. Our greed and our industrial capacity have done much to damage our environment over the past 200 years.

We can see the damage that has been done to the environment in eastern Europe. We can also see the damage that has occurred in the Third world because of the need for those countries to service their debts and feed their populations. The developed world has controlled things for many years. Therefore, we must face the fact that if we are to tackle those problems, we shall have to take extremely difficult decisions.

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The developed nations such as Britain, the United States and Canada must pay to tackle the problems in the United Kingdom, in eastern Europe and in the Third world. We must recognise that damage to the environment, wherever it occurs, recognises no boundaries. We must deal with that problem on a worldwide basis. It is no good stopping the production and sale of CFCs in this country if we allow them to be produced and used elsewhere, because CFCs damage the ozone layer that we all share.

We must accept that if we are to tackle the problems that will arise because of the Third world's growing need for energy, we must allow those countries to develop a positive policy towards the environment. I attended a conference in Ottawa recently about global warming. We considered charging $10 for every tonne of carbon emitted into the atmosphere or the equivalent of approximately $2 per barrel of petrol. That would allow for the collection of £55 billion a year, which is a substantial amount.

I could have made many other points if time had permitted. However, I shall say only that we must recognise that we have spent billions of pounds preparing ourselves for an attack from an imaginary enemy in the east, so we should be prepared now to spend a similar amount to tackle the problems facing the Third world and the environment. That is the real challenge and we shall fail our children and our grandchildren if we do not wake up to that responsibility. Several hon. Members rose --

Mr. Speaker : Order. I do not want it to be taken as a precedent, but I shall call the hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) now.

9.42 pm

Mr. Jeremy Corbyn (Islington, North) : I promise to be extremely brief, Mr. Speaker, because I understand that both Front-Bench spokesmen want to reply to the debate. This has been an extremely important debate and the Opposition Front Bench are to be congratulated on choosing this subject and on giving it the importance that it deserves. My hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd) is to be congratulated on her excellent speech which I fully support. I similarly support the Opposition motion. There will be a demonstration tomorrow on the Albert embankment outside the Montreal protocol meeting about CFCs. Most of the demonstrators, including people from Friends of the Earth and other groups, will be calling for a complete ban on CFC production. I fully support that. That is a crucial decision because we must decide whom we support and consider the environment.

If we are to ban CFC production completely, as I believe that we should, we must also accept that considerable support must be given to other countries which wish to continue to produce refrigerators and similar products. The technology to produce those goods without CFCs must be transferred to China, India and other countries which need it. If that does not happen, we cannot lecture those countries about producing CFCs while we hold that technology to ourselves and use it as an economic lever against poorer countries and poorer people throughout the world.

The economic imbalance between countries is at the root of the world's problems. Some Conservative

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Members spoke eloquently and at great length with an inbuilt assumption that resources automatically flow from the richest people in the richest countries to the poorest people in the poorest countries. That simply does not happen, and it has not happened for several hundred years. The resources of the poorest countries have been plundered and taken to the industrial countries, and it is still happening now. The debt crisis means that $50 billion flows north. Economic models have been implanted in the debtor countries by the International Monetary Fund. Schools, hospitals and social services centres are closed, and environmental damage is imposed on those countries by the debt crisis.

I crave the indulgence of the House briefly to quote from one of my favourite newspapers, the Utusan Konsumer, produced by the Consumers Association of Penang--an excellent organisation which sponsors the third- world network. That newspaper has a full page headed "Dicing with debt". It explains exactly what has been happening in the past 10 years. The real price of sugar has dropped by 20 per cent., linseed oil by 9 per cent., and groundnuts by 9 per cent. The amount of exports required by poorer countries simply to maintain interest payments on the debt has shot up year after year, at the same time as the United States Government are maintaining a massive federal Government spending deficit and promoting massive arms expenditure.

If we are to sort out the problems of poverty and of the environment, we require a real restructuring of the world's economy. That will not be achieved by imposing a model of market forces on the poorest people in the poorest countries but by paying those people for the products that they produce, not hoarding technological advances for ourselves but sharing and spreading them around the world, and not persuading and pushing countries to revert to monoculture production, which is dangerous and damaging to the environment.

Much more could be said, and the debate is crucial. I hope that the Government will recognise that cuts in their aid budget show no real concern for the rest of the world and merely demonstrate their meanness towards the rest of the world while promoting an economic policy which continues to promote the flow of wealth from the poorest to the richest.

9.46 pm

Mr. George Foulkes (Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley) : Hon. Members who have participated in this excellent debate should be congratulated. I refer in particular to English hon. Members who, as the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Mr. Lester) rightly said, eschewed other competing attractions. As a Scot, I can only wish the English team well--we are not there any more. My hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Mr. Pike) deserves congratulations not only because he eschewed other attractions but because he was present throughout the debate--on his birthday. All hon. Members appreciate his commitment to this topic.

The hon. Member for Gravesham (Mr. Arnold), having regretted the party political nature of the debate, made the most partisan speech so far. What he said was rubbish. He may not realise it--he may not wish to admit it-- but in the last few years of the Labour Government, aid was rising as a percentage of the gross national product, and by 1979 it was more than 0.51 per cent. It is now only 0.31 per cent.

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The Minister has been misusing statistics. In attacking my hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd), she denied--or pretended to deny--that our commitment to 0.7 per cent. within five years existed, even after I pointed out the error. She then tried to get the best of both worlds by attacking the consequences of our commitment to 0.7 per cent., by saying that it was expensive and profligate. Yet Germany already gives 0.41 per cent., France 0.78 per cent., the Netherlands 0.94 per cent., and Denmark 1 per cent., in all cases with a much healthier gross national product than the United Kingdom. The Government's official development assistance has reduced by a quarter in real terms since 1979. Those are the real facts, not the ones that we got from the Minister and from the hon. Member for Gravesham. Their statistics are not facts.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley referred to the green glossy handbook on the environment and the British aid programme. It is, indeed, the pinnacle of doubletalk and contradiction from the Government. Under a smiling and attractive colour photograph of the Minister of State, her foreword reads-- [Interruption.] The right hon. Lady will have her opportunity to reply. The foreword reads : "In the last three years we have given a major boost to environmental issues".

Later, in what might be considered an unusual bout of honesty, the foreword continues :

"Words and deeds are sometimes a long way apart".

Words and deeds are certainly a long way apart under this Government. That is true in relation to pollution, global warming, ozone depletion, the tropical rain forests and Antarctica. The reality of the Government's deeds is a long way from the rhetoric of their words.

Mr. Rooker : The proof of the pudding is, indeed, in the eating. The report of the National Audit Office on bilateral aid to India has already been mentioned. The Public Accounts Committee took evidence on that issue in February. The report has not yet been published, although the evidence has. Hon. Members who serve on that Committee were extremely surprised to learn that the ODA has only two specialist advisers on environmental matters, who have worldwide responsibilities.

Mr. Foulkes : My hon. Friend has made an excellent point, which does not need any amplification.

The astonishing theme of the publication to which I have just referred--my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) also referred to it in his excellent speech--is the alleged compatibility of economic development on the one hand, and environmental protection on the other. There is a supposedly effective combination of market mechanisms and regulations. The Government seem to be saying to the developing world, "Fear not, market forces will protect you." That is the astonishing theme of that document. But that is not the experience of the victims of the Bhopal disasters or the Exxon Valdez and Balvia Paraiso oil spillages. Fishermen in many a polluted sea or river have other tales to tell about who discharged the toxic waste and how they need regulations to protect them from free market forces which put the pursuit of profit above all else.

Sir Ian Gilmour (Chesham and Amersham) rose

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Mr. Foulkes : I shall not give way. This has been an interesting debate for hon. Members who have been present throughout, which the right hon. Gentleman has not.

The principal example with which I shall demonstrate the doubletalk of Toryspeak is their policy towards Antarctica which is the world's only relatively unspoilt continent and has a unique ecosystem. Almost a year ago --on 4 July 1989--I led our opposition to the Government's Antarctic Minerals Bill on the basis that, far from protecting the Antarctic, the Bill represented a prospectors' charter. We supported a proposal from the Australian Government that Antarctica should be designated a world park and kept free from exploration and development. Even then, that proposal was receiving support from France, although the Minister tried to pretend that the opposite was the case. In fact, France is now a co-sponsor of the plan, which also has the support of Belgium, Italy, West Germany and New Zealand, and now even Poland, America and the Soviet Union are having second thoughts about the minerals convention.

If the Government are really serious about conservation and wish to put the interests of the environment before commercial interests, they will join the growing chorus rejecting the Antarctic minerals convention, and they will join the growing support to establish a world park in Antarctica. I will give the Minister a chance to intervene if she can tell us that at the meeting in Santiago in November the British Government will at the very least support a long-term moratorium on mineral prospecting in Antarctica. Better still, I hope that the Government will take a leading part in supporting the world park plan. The next Labour Government will certainly do so. Moreover, we shall make 0.7 per cent. of GNP our aid target within the lifetime of our Administration after the next election. That is why the people of the third world, as much as the people of the United Kingdom, are waiting, hoping and praying for the return of a Labour Government.

9.54 pm

Mrs. Chalker : As always, this has been an interesting debate. In the few minutes available to me I shall try to respond to some of the points that have been raised. I refer in particular to the National Audit Office report on the Indian aid programme, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Bar (Mr. Rooker). The hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd) made highly selective references to the NAO report, in particular to the Rihand power station project. I have a copy of the report to hand now, although it was not available to me earlier in the debate. I do not intend to comment in detail on it ; the Public Accounts Committee has yet to report. In order, however, to put matters in context, I intend to refer to paragraphs 19 and 20. The National Audit Office found that "the Administration"--

that is, the Overseas Development Administration--

"have developed sound procedures which their staff operate in a professional and competent manner. Aid projects have certainly produced highly beneficial results in terms of the Administration's objectives.

Reference is made to the projects in the following paragraph. The NAO says that projects

"continue to have worthwhile outcomes which have a positive impact on development."

Despite the fact that it has had problems, Rihand is a highly successful project. We were aware of the ash

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disposal and other problems. That is why I undertook, as soon as I arrived at the Department, to work with the Indian Government on solving them. The most important point abut Rihand is that it will use efficient and clean technology. Anything of that sort that is done must help a nation that is trying hard to help itself to produce, to trade and to earn currency. The hon. Lady ignored the many jobs that are provided both in India, as a result of Rihand, and in this country, in companies that are involved with the project. I reject also as beneath contempt the serious allegations which have no foundation whatever, which the hon. Lady made on other matters. As for the environment, we have not heard very much about the non-governmental organisations, but I pay tribute to them for their work on environmental issues. With them, we support 56 environmental projects costing £6 million. They are doing extremely well. Reference has been made to global warming. The Overseas Development Administration has commissioned the only study into the options to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the third world. The ODA has also undertaken a study of the options for phasing out

chlorofluorocarbons. Much of the work initiated by my Department lies behind the work now being done on the Montreal protocol.

In January I made it absolutely clear that western technology needed to be shared with the third world. I said that I was prepared to investigate the use of the aid and trade provision for sharing that technology. That is exactly the way in which the west should help the third world to adopt modern, good and sound technology if we are to reduce the environmental problems that face us.

I endorse all that was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Mr. Lester) in his speech on the aid and trade provision. He was absolutely right ; I shall not repeat what he said. I congratulate also the hon. Member for Clydebank and Milngavie (Mr. Worthington) on what he said about the critical importance of population planning. He was right to refer to the importance of women, not just in health, education, housing and welfare. We are pursuing an active programme to enhance the status of women through the development programmes. An excellent Bangladeshi non- governmental organisation has been successful in helping women to achieve investment through credit unions. I recommend to the hon. Member for Bristol, South (Ms. Primarolo) the Bangladeshi rural action committee project in Bangladesh.

We have an excellent programme. We want to do more to help the third world improve the environment through our aid programme. We have a good foundation on which to build. I am determined to ensure that that is successfully carried out, in full co-operation with our partners in the European Community and worldwide through UNDP and all the other good organisations.

Question put, That the original words stand part of the Question :--

The House divided : Ayes 195, Noes 260.

Division No. 265] [10 pm

AYES

Adams, Allen (Paisley N)

Allen, Graham

Alton, David

Anderson, Donald

Archer, Rt Hon Peter

Ashton, Joe

Banks, Tony (Newham NW)

Barnes, Harry (Derbyshire NE)

Barnes, Mrs Rosie (Greenwich)

Barron, Kevin

Beckett, Margaret

Bell, Stuart

Benn, Rt Hon Tony

Bennett, A. F. (D'nt'n & R'dish)

Bermingham, Gerald

Bidwell, Sydney

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