House of Commons Hansard Debates for 3 Jun 1992

Mr. Howard : The hon. Gentleman will not be astonished to learn that I do not agree with his analysis of what has happened in the past 20 years, or with the reasons that he has given for what has happened. The Governments of most of the countries to which he referred do not agree with his analysis either.

I do not know whether it is now the Labour party's view that the policies of the International Monetary Fund are not sensible or appropriate. Of course, we understand Labour's sensitivity in relation to the IMF, but I was under the impression that its policies enjoyed widespread support.

We intend to improve the flow of environmentally beneficial technologies to developing countries, and to strengthen the international institutional arrangements to support sustainable development. The Government have played a leading role in the efforts of the international community to achieve those goals, and I believe that we have every reason to take pride in that role.

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As the House will know, on 9 May the United Nations

intergovernmental negotiating committee adopted a convention on climate change. That followed 16 months of difficult and delicate negotiations. The convention will now be opened for signature during the United Nations Conference on environment and development, and the United Kingdom Government will sign it at Rio.

Those who have attacked the agreement on the ground that it is empty of content or lacking in specific commitment cannot have taken the trouble to read it with any care. It commits all the signatories to devising and reporting on the measures that they propose to take to combat climate change. It also specifically commits all the developed countries to giving a lead by taking measures aimed at returning emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by the year 2000.

Through the global environmental facility, it will provide a mechanism for financial support to meet the agreed incremental costs of projects in developing countries. We have undertaken to provide the GEF with new and additional resources for that purpose if others do likewise.

I believe that the outcome of the negotiations represents a significant first step in the global response to climate change, but it is only a first step ; others will follow. It is a sensible precautionary response, delivered while we improve our scientific understanding of climate change. As our knowledge develops, it may become necessary to make further commitments to limit emissions : that is why one of the most important aspects of the convention is the strong process that it has established for review of the action being taken by parties to the convention, and of the need for further action.

The draft biodiversity convention contains many useful elements. It would pave the way for individual countries to set up a network of protected areas to safeguard habitats. It would assist

countries--particularly those in the tropics, where most important sites of biodiversity are located--to devise plans that meet their national circumstances. It would contribute to the global benefits of conserving as much biodiversity as possible. It would facilitate the sharing of benefits, in the form of potentially valuable biological resources, between the countries providing them and those that develop them.

But--yes, there is a but--the financial provisions of the draft convention have caused us a good deal of concern. They are drawn broadly, and, on the face of it--given an appropriate interpretation of them--it is possible that they would allow the conference of parties to the convention to determine the amount of contributions that would have to be made by other countries, including the United Kingdom. That is not yet settled. We continue to examine the text very closely, and we are exploring urgently ways in which we can safeguard our position and which would enable us to sign the convention without finding ourselves signing a blank cheque. I very much hope that we shall be able to sign, and we are making considerable efforts to achieve that objective.

Ms. Dawn Primarolo (Bristol, South) : Is the Secretary of State aware that the agrement on funding mechanisms for a consensus on payment within the biodiversity treaty is similar to agreements contained in other treaties--for instance, the Montreal protocol, to which we have already

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agreed? Were not the steps taken in the biodiversity agreement intended to answer the points raised by the North countries? Is that not a totally spurious reason for rejecting the treaty, which has been advanced now purely to protect the interests of America, rather than honouring the principles contained in the treaty?

Mr. Howard : I assure the hon. Lady that our position on that question has nothing to do with America's position. The Americans have expressed a number of concerns about the biodiversity treaty which we do not share. They object to a number of clauses which we consider perfectly acceptable. Our position in relation to the treaty is far from identical to that of the United States.

I listened with great interest to the first part of the hon. Lady's question. That may indeed be a possible interpretation of the arrangements that the convention seeks to establish, and if, on examination, it turns out that it really is the better interpretation, we shall sign. We are looking very urgently for a way in which we can do so.

Mr. Dalyell : Like my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould), the Secretary of State is an able lawyer. I am not a lawyer, and I realise that intellectual property rights are a legal minefield. Let us take, however, two examples : the Madagascar periwinkle, and the liana plant from Cameroon. It is claimed--and there is some evidence to support the claim--that the liana is a possible antedote for AIDS, while the periwinkle is valued for its fruit.

What intellectual property rights, in the form of money, would accrue to native peoples? They produce the knowledge that has put western scientists on to the possibility that the examples that I have given may have important medicinal properties--knowledge that can be reproduced in the Amazon. Those who have been to Belem and the Goeldi institute, and have seen the work of Elaine Elizabetsky, know of the enormous potential for native peoples to obtain some of the benefits of medicinal plants which are of great benefit to western pharmaceutical companies.

Mr. Howard : I hope that I can allay the hon. Gentleman's anxieties. We are content with the provisions in the convention for dealing with intellectual property rights. That is not our concern ; it is the concern of the Americans. Our concerns are different. I have sought to explain them. I very much hope that we can overcome them.

Sir Peter Emery (Honiton) : When we are dealing with the American point, is it not correct to point out that American Congressional opinion, which was made evident when the Earth summit was debated at a meeting of the North Atlantic Assembly, does not run in parallel with that of the Administration? Congress has been pressing the Administration to go much further and to sign the agreements arranged for the Earth summit, which at this moment it would appear the Administration are unwilling to do.

Mr. Howard : My hon. Friend knows full well that it is usually the case that Congressional opinion does not run in parallel with that of the Administration. I am not sure that I would follow my hon. Friend's speculation as to where the balance of Congressional opinion lies. I do not

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think that there is unanimity in Congress on these matters, but it is clear that there is a difference of view between Congress and the Administration.

Mr. Gould : I am grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way to me again. We on this side of the House have been listening with great care to what he has been saying about the difficulties, as he sees them, in signing the biodiversity convention, but let me press him on that matter, so as to be sure of his position. Does he say that it is only and solely his concern about the cost commitment that causes the Government difficulty, and that if that were to be resolved to his satisfaction he could sign the agreement? Since the Secretary of State has presumably been very much involved in the drafting of the convention, and since he is well equipped to take a view of its legal meaning, what is his opinion on the matter?

Mr. Howard : I must disclaim any responsibility for the drafting of this document. It emerged during the negotiations in Nairobi. The discussions took place at official level. They were not decided on a vote. They were the outcome of a very protracted series of negotiations. Our officials, who were present at the negotiations, at every stage made clear our reservations in relation to these particular clauses. As I suggested to the hon. Member for Bristol, South (Ms. Primarolo), we are looking very carefully at the text to see whether we can sign.

I shall answer the hon. Gentleman's question directly. That is the primary obstacle to our signing. It is not the only one ; there are one or two others. However, I very much hope that we shall be able to overcome all these obstacles and that we shall sign the convention. The text of the statement of principles, the Rio declaration, is agreed. It contains useful principles for future action. It includes the precautionary principle. It stresses the need to avoid use of the environment as a disguised restriction on trade. It endorses the "polluter pays" principle and the importance of environmental information. We have made much progress in achieving a final form also for Agenda 21, covering some 40 different areas for action. Agreement is in sight on the institutional arrangements to take the Rio process forward after UNCED. I very much hope that we shall be able to reach agreement on that.

In addition to our part in the negotiations--which, as I have indicated, was a very prominent one--the United Kingdom has made a number of other significant contributions to the overall success of UNCED. We have brought forward our own target for reducing our emissions of carbon dioxide. We were the first country to make a specific commitment to make available new and additional resources, provided that others did likewise. We have assisted a number of developing countries with the costs of preparing their contributions to Rio. We have financed the organisation of a vigorous preparatory process for non-governmental bodies within the United Kingdom, and we made available $1 million to lead an international effort to prevent the collapse of the global forum of non-governmental organisations in Rio-- and much else besides.

I have set out our contributions to the success of Rio in some detail so as to put into perspective the allegations that are frequently made about this Government's efforts on the environment, but there is another area where our

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approach has frequently been misunderstood, or consciously misrepresented. That is the area of our financial contribution to sustainable development.

There will undoubtedly be a great deal of debate in Rio on financial issues. The measures needed to protect the environment and to achieve more appropriate patterns of development throughout the world will undoubtedly have substantial costs as well as benefits. The developing countries will need help in achieving the new patterns of sustainable development. The single most important assistance that they need is an improvement in the world trading system.

The recent breakthrough in the common agricultural policy reform opens the door to the possibility of completing the Uruguay round of the general agreement on tariffs and trade reform and of giving real meaning, real hope to the development of the economies of the south. In subsequent rounds there, increasing attention will need to be paid to the linkages between trade policy and the protection of the environment. I have no doubt that the discussions in Rio will emphasise that important message.

When the Indonesian Environment Minister came to see me a couple of weeks ago, he readily acknowledged the fact that trade was far more important than aid, not only in terms of the development needs of his country but in terms of the extent to which they were going to be able to improve their environment. For some of the poorest countries, their burden of debt drastically restricts their capacity to make the necessary economic reforms and to tackle environmental and developmental problems.

Britain has consistently taken a lead in action on debt. Since 1979, we have relieved developing countries of over £1 billion of old aid loans, and all new aid to the poorest countries is given on grant terms. In September 1990, when my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister was Chancellor of the Exchequer, he proposed to the Paris Club a new set of Trinidad terms for the poorest countries, to relieve some or all of their outstanding debt. The international community must do more. We must build on that excellent start and offer further improvement to the Trinidad terms.

Mr. David Alton (Liverpool, Mossley Hill) : I am sure that the Secretary of State is right to identify the crippling burden of debt as one of the major problems that faces undeveloped nations. Would he care to give figures to illustrate what the burden of that debt now is throughout the world and how countries are likely to be paying back very much more this year both to this country and to other developed nations than they are receiving in aid, such is the scale of the debt burden?

Mr. Howard : I suggested that the initiative that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister took when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer was a very important first step and that more needs to be done. I believe that more will be done and that we shall be in the forefront of those efforts. As for the specific point raised by the hon. Gentleman, my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State who is to wind up the debate will seek to provide him with the figures for which he has asked. However, I am sure that both he and I are at one in recognising that this is a continuing process. I hope that he welcomes the leading role that the United Kingdom Government have taken.

Mr. John Denham (Southampton, Itchen) : I understand what has been said about the Trinidad terms, but according

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to a recent parliamentary answer that I received, the projected official debt payments from the poorest countries to the United Kingdom, far from falling in the coming financial year, are expected to increase. Does not the Secretary of State agree that that is a disappointing position in which to be nearly two years after the Prime Minister launched the Trinidad terms?

Mr. Howard : The answer to the hon. Gentleman's point is much the same as that which I gave to the hon. Member for Liverpool, Mossley Hill (Mr. Alton). My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State will deal with the details when he winds up the debate.

We have also increasingly emphasised environmental concerns in the aid that we give to developing countries. Assistance with population programmes, the protection of forests and reforestation, energy-saving programmes and other environmentally friendly developments feature increasingly strongly.

In the last two years, we have played a leading part in helping the World bank, the United Nations Environment Programme and the United Nations Development Programme to fashion a new instrument, the global environmental facility, for assisting developing countries with the additional costs of environmental measures taken in those countries to protect the global environment. We have already committed significant resources to this facility and have made it clear that we shall be ready to commit new and additional resources to this fund at the appropriate stage to replenish it. This will enable it to provide resources to support the developing countries in undertaking their commitments under the climate change convention and for biodiversity projects.

In all these ways, we are making a positive and significant contribution to the financial discussions involved in the Rio summit.

Sir Nicholas Fairbairn (Perth and Kinross) : One of the hypocrisies of the Rio summit is that it has taken the destruction of one major rain forest to print all the bumf that has been circulated.

Mr. Howard : There is no doubt that there is an awful lot of bumf-- anyone who has had anything to do with the preparations for the conference can hardly fail to agree with my hon. and learned Friend. As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said in the House yesterday, Rio

"is the start of a continuing process."--[ Official Report, 2 June 1992 ; Vol. 208, c. 704.]

The process set in train by the Earth summit will not end on 14 June. It will evolve and lead to further and yet more effective action to deal with the important global problems that we all face. No one should underestimate the importance of evolutionary processes of this sort or minimise their potential for good.

We have experience of the effects that can be achieved. Our White Paper on the environment, "This Common Inheritance", has at its core the argument that environmental management is a continuing process. That White Paper established the mechanisms of green Ministers in every Department, integration of environmental policies across Government, collective target setting and progress chasing. We pursued that process in

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our first anniversary report and I shall ensure that the second anniversary report builds on and develops the strengths of its predecessors.

This process has taken the United Kingdom to the forefront of the implementation of environmental management of national policies. Rio offers us the chance to begin the same incremental process on a world scale. It is essential that we succeed and I believe that that will be the real achievement of the Earth summit. The right instruments must be forged to ensure effective progress long after all the delegates have left and the conference halls are empty.

The key elements are good and timely science, constant monitoring of the state of the environment, realistic commitments to improvement, practical measures for tracking targets and relentless progress chasing. The Government have the political will to adopt that approach and to pursue it with vigour. We shall be using our substantial international influence to involve other countries in the same process. I intend to do my utmost to ensure that our children look back on the Earth summit in Rio as a critical turning point for the future well-being of our planet.

5.12 pm

Mr. Bryan Gould (Dagenham) : The Danish referendum on Maastricht has opened up for us a new debate on a future European agenda, for which we might all have good reason to be grateful. It has also provided us with a more immediate opportunity to debate an even more important topic. That topic is nothing short of the very future of our planet--its future as an ecosystem for all species and as a home for our own species and its future generations. Questions of war and peace, poverty and plenty and equity and survival are involved in the issues that will be discussed at the Earth summit in Rio. The tragedy is that the summit, for which such high hopes were held, now seems destined to be a disappointing failure. It will be all the more disappointing because the early signs, even from the Government, were relatively encouraging. As the Secretary of State has pointed out, the Prime Minister was one of the first to pledge his attendance at the Earth summit. He followed that up with a welcome speech at a conference organised by The Sunday Times on 8 July last year. It was a speech full of fine phrases and apparent commitments to an environmental agenda. The reality has turned out to be somewhat different. That early ardour has cooled. The air has been thick with warnings about not expecting too much, about how difficult it will all be and, above all, how much it will cost.

Like his immediate predecessor, our Prime Minister has hastened to show that he is aware of the environmental agenda. He has even made speeches that have put items on to that agenda. However, having done that, he has shown that he does not have the slightest idea what to do about environmental issues. The reason for that is not very difficult to find. One does not need to be a great political philosopher or environmental expert to detect that, like his predecessor, the Prime Minister is fine with the high-sounding phrase, but when he is confronted with the politics of intervening in the free market--that is what we are faced with--he backs off rapidly. There is nothing that equips those on the right in politics to intervene to protect the wider and longer-term interest that we call the environment.

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Mr. Corbyn : Does my hon. Friend recall that only a few years ago the Government introduced the Antarctic Minerals Bill- -the paramount example of putting free enterprise ahead of the interests of the world environment--and that they were finally forced, unwillingly, to sign a moratorium on minerals exploration in the Antarctic? Should they not now announce, at least as a gesture of goodwill towards the summit, that they will introduce a Bill to cancel what is now the Antarctic Minerals Act 1989?

Mr. Gould : My hon. Friend has pointed to yet another instance. We are seeing an unfortunate repetition of it writ large with the Rio summit. The Government simply do not accept that anything other than market forces will resolve these issues. That was Mrs. Thatcher's view. I am encouraged by the Secretary of State's apparent open disagreement with his former leader on this issue. He is shaking his head and I regard that as at least some progress.

Mr. Howard : I had hoped that we could approach this issue on a relatively objective and non-partisan basis. Only yesterday I accused the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould), in an entirely different context, of living in a fantasy world. He has confirmed that description far sooner than I had expected. Of course we accept that there are occasions when it is appropriate to intervene in the workings of the market to achieve environmental and other objectives. We accept that regulation has a part to play. We have always accepted that. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister's predecessor accepted that. The hon. Gentleman will recall that I was responsible for putting through this place the Water Act 1989, which contains numerous regulatory provisions. It set up the National Rivers Authority, which is the most effective environmental watchdog we have. The hon. Gentleman is tilting at windmills.

Mr. Gould : The Secretary of State hardly chose the happiest instance of his willingness to frustrate the workings of the market when he pointed to the privatisation of the water industry. I do not mean to patronise him, because I know that he is relatively new to this brief. Therefore, he may not recall the former Prime Minister's widely reported speech to the United Nations in which she shocked her audience, and certainly a wider audience, by insisting that market forces were the means by which the environment would be protected. She went further by saying, memorably, that the multinational corporations were the great instruments of environmental protection. If I understand the Secretary of State correctly, I think that this is a remarkable instance, perhaps the first on record, of his disagreeing with his former leader. We have to say now that the language, if we are to believe it, is welcome, but we want to put him, his Department and the Government to the practical test. We want to see precisely what he will sign when he goes to Rio at the end of the week.

Mr. Howard : The hon. Gentleman cannot get away with that. Of course market forces contribute a tremendous amount to improving the environment, but there are occasions when one needs to intervene. I suppose that there is no better example than using market forces to encourage greater use of lead-free petrol--one intervenes but one does so by working with the grain and by using

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market forces. It is a measure of how much the Labour party has to learn that it still does not understand such basic lessons.

Mr. Gould : I have no doubt that, given time, the Secretary of State will think of even more instances, but the truth is that what he says is not borne out by the Government's inability over a long period to translate rhetoric into action. The reason is that they fight shy of and stop short of the politics of intervention which come naturally to our side of the political argument-- [Interruption.] Yes, and I say it proudly. We are in politics because we know that the community must intervene in the short-term, narrow, selfish and fragmented working of the marketplace if we are to protect the wider and longer-term interests which we have become accustomed to describing as the environment.

Mrs. Teresa Gorman (Billericay) rose --

Mr. Gould : I must make a little progress and then I shall certainly give way to the hon. Lady.

The changed tone or the shift in the debate from the high expectations created by the Prime Minister in July last year is well caught by the opening words of a recent article by the Secretary of State in The House Magazine. It began with the assertion : "Sustainable development is a fashionable new phrase."

I wonder whether he understands what a dismissive flavour there is in the words "fashionable", "new" and "phrase". They contain no recognition of the fact that the Rio summit itself is the direct consequence of the Brundtland report which established sustainable development, which was already common currency among

environmentalists, as a fundamental principle for expressing concern about our environment.

Mr. Howard : If the hon. Gentleman cared to read on, he would know that I explained what was meant by the phrase and how important it is.

Mr. Gould : I have no doubt that the Secretary of State wrote a substantial article thereafter, but I am entitled to point out that the opening sentence shows that he does not understand that sustainable development is not "fashionable", "new" or merely a "phrase", but that it is at the heart of environmental concern and of the great international efforts now being mounted to make protection real and sustainable.

The new atmosphere was intensified by the fact that in advance of the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister, the junior Minister--the Minister for the Environment and Countryside--was sent to Rio as a sort of advance party. His function was clearly to damp down expectations. At the same time, behind the scenes, a major diplomatic effort had been made to use United States recalcitrance to scale down the aims of the Rio conference and to enable us to shelter behind its very much diminished objectives.

The new Secretary of State has concentrated not on persuading the Americans to recognise their responsibility but on making common cause with them in frustrating the world's environmental agenda. It has been a disreputable collusion which does this country no credit. It has involved us in a complex game plan to wreck the conference and to ensure that it achieves nothing other than hot air--the last thing that the planet now needs.

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The first element was to shift Rio's agenda. It began as the summit that might help to change the direction of policies that now threaten the future quality of life for millions of people across the globe, but instead the Government and the Americans managed to shift the key question to merely whether George Bush would go. That suited the Government, who had become increasingly concerned about the determination of most of our European partners to do something about the looming environmental crisis.

Rio presented big problems. The Government would either have to change their policies wholesale or break ranks spectacularly with our European partners on an issue of great importance and interest to millions of voters. I believe that that is why the Secretary of State was so happy to seize on the United States position. He presented himself as the honest broker, telling the Europeans that they would have to tone down their expectations and policies if they were to expect the Americans to attend at all, without even having to mention in passing that he would like policies weakened in exactly that way.

Mrs. Gorman : Does not the hon. Gentleman think it possible that President Bush was revising his view of the issue on the basis of scientific information being produced by agencies such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in his own country, which has thrown grave doubts on the concept of global warming? On that basis, perhaps President Bush is taking a second look.

Mr. Gould : The hon. Lady will understand if I say that I have heard her express that view before. She claims scientific expertise in order to judge these matters, but I am entitled to say that she is in a tiny minority and she has ranged against her the world's leading experts and the United Nations panel on climatic change.

Mrs. Gorman rose --

Mr. Gould : The hon. Lady has been able to express her views on a number of occasions. She defies the huge preponderance of scientific evidence.

Mrs. Gorman : Is not the hon. Gentleman aware that a document has been issued at the Rio summit--signed by more than 200 of the world's leading scientists, including 54 Nobel prizewinners--which expresses exactly the view that I have attempted to express in the House ?

Mr. Gould : The hon. Lady must accept that the United Nations intergovernmental panel on climatic change, which brought together the world's leading experts, reached the considered view that global warming is a problem which poses a real threat to the world environment. Furthermore, it acted on what I believe to be the only proper principle--the precautionary principle, with which I shall deal in a moment.

We should not have been surprised by the shift of emphasis by the Government. Our reactionary collusion with the United States is exactly matched by the Government's existing environmental policies at home. Why should we be surprised at what will happen in Rio when the Government have ridden roughshod over their commitment to environmental impact assessments in cases

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such as Twyford down and Oxleas wood and when the promise to legislate for an environmental protection agency made no appearance in the Queen's Speech ?

Our role in ensuring that the climatic change convention contains no binding commitments on targets is prefigured by the sorry saga of our role in the European Community's position on that issue. For years, the Secretary of State's predecessors dragged their feet, refusing to join our European partners in agreeing to freeze emissions at 1990 levels by the year 2000. Belatedly, the Secretary of State's immediate predecessor dropped that refusal--which was very welcome--thereby conceding, incidentally, that the target was not impossible or impracticable on technical or financial grounds. Typically, we demonstrated that what was missing from the equation was the political will to act. We made it clear that we would not act unless others did so. We then ensured that the United States and others would veto any agreement that contained binding commitments and targets. Notwithstanding the hon. Lady's testimony, the result was a tragedy for the world environment and a denial of the basic tenet of environmental concern--the precautionary principle--which dictates that it is the environment which must be given the benefit of any doubt.

I sometimes think that we do not understand the nature of environmental damage and degradation. It can kick forward as though on a ratchet : once it has happened it cannot easily be turned back. That is why the precautionary principle is essential and why it is such a tragedy that it looks like being ignored in Rio.

The picture is drawn even starker in terms of the biodiversity convention. In the speech on 8 July last year to which I referred, the Prime Minister said :

"We may be destroying plants that could help us to adapt to environmental change. We are losing species faster than we can catalogue them. It is as if the owner of a great gallery of pictures were to slash or destroy a Renoir or a Rembrandt every day. Such destruction betrays our future."

Those were fine words ; it was a good speech. Now we know that once again those words mean nothing. The United States is jibbing at the cost and, true to form, we now hear the same message from British Ministers--that we, too, will have difficulty, on cost grounds, in signing the convention that we did so much to shape and draft. I was interested to hear the Secretary of State concede that, although cost grounds were our primary problem, they were not the only one--that there were other difficulties as well. We face the prospect that, whatever happens in Rio, the Secretary of State has prepared a position from which he will be able to say that an objection remains to prevent us from signing.

Those are massive disappointments, but what will really count as the failure of Rio is the refusal of the developed world to change its pattern of consumption, and the consequent condemnation of billions of the world's poor to poverty, disease and death. Again, the only message that we get from Rio is about the refusal of the rich developed world to pay the Bill for change, with the excuse that the recession makes it impossible to afford that bill.

If we rely on the recession as an excuse, how are we to persuade desperately poor countries that the environment must be taken seriously? Their excuses carry rather more urgency, conviction and weight than does our recession. They suffer the crippling burden of debt, the adverse movements in the terms of trade and the pressing problems of poverty, malnutrition and disease.

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Sir Peter Emery : Does the hon. Gentleman, in all honesty, suggest that he, or any Government, should give control over the amount of money to be raised to a majority of the nations which will contribute very little? I should like a direct answer to that question, because it embodies the main difficulty that many people have to solve.

Mr. Gould : It is wrong to assume that the people who suffer the consequences of the unequal pattern of consumption in the world economy are making no contribution. That is their contribution--and they look to us to make a commensurate contribution, which we are too mean to make. That is why we are unable to offer a moral lead, which we should be able to give. Furthermore, we are unable to offer the material help that we should contribute. If we say that the recession makes it impossible to tackle the problems affecting the environment, we must not be surprised if others follow that lead.

Again, the Government have set a sorry example.

Mr. Howard : The hon. Gentleman has conspicuously failed to answer the specific question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Honiton (Sir P. Emery). If the convention required developed countries to make whatever contribution developing countries decided to be appropriate, would the hon. Gentleman sign it?

Mr. Gould : I began by referring to the Maastricht referendum, and I have not noticed any reluctance among Conservative Members to sign up for internationally agreed arrangements under which we must make huge payments, beyond our control, to some of the world's richest countries in the European Community. I am not saying that that is wrong, but one cannot justify it while jibbing at the much smaller contribution demanded of us by some of the poorest countries in the world.

On the question of being prepared to devote resources to help the poorer and developing world, the Government again set a poor example. The Prime Minister may say--as, astonishingly, he did--that on aid we are leading in terms of quality and quantity, but the facts are against him, and those facts are shameful.

Not only have we consistently failed to meet the United Nations target for aid of 0.7 per cent. of GNP, but the share has fallen from 0.51 per cent. in 1979 to 0.27 per cent. last year, which puts us shamefully near the bottom of the international league table. In 1990, the first time, we reached the point of taking more from the developing world in debt repayments than we returned in aid. As my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham) said in an intervention, those debt repayments are set to rise, not to fall. The Government have failed the third world and, as a result, they have failed the environment.

Mrs. Audrey Wise (Preston) : If my hon. Friend is about to leave the subjects of aid and poverty, may I ask him first to comment on the fact that poverty affects women disproportionately and that it has been clearly shown that resources put into women's hands are used better both for people and for the environment? Will my hon. Friend ask the Government what they intend to do to ensure that aid is used to increase the power and control of women, to the advantage of the environment?

Mr. Gould : My hon. Friend makes an important point, which should be enshrined in the work of the Earth

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summit in Rio. Many people agree that what has often gone wrong with our limited aid effort is that it has often been designed more for the benefit of construction companies in the developed world than to put economic power and opportunity into the hands of those whom we are trying to help.

As a consequence of that failure, we have failed the environment. We cannot expect poor countries to concern themselves with the longer-term future of their natural resources--their forests, rivers and soil--if we force them to exploit those resources commercially in the short term to meet their debt repayments. We must tackle the problem of the debt difficulty.

We need a proper aid programme ; altruism is not enough. We need a sustained and comprehensive aid programme from the Government. The impulse to personal generosity, although always welcome, cannot do the job. We need new arrangements through the GATT, which could, as the Secretary of State rightly said, take advantage of the reform of the common agricultural policy. That would be small enough in itself, but it would be a welcome step. The test will be what happens in the GATT talks, which do not even address the problems of third-world trade. We must act to restore some semblance of fairness in world trade.

The Rio conference was planned with sober purpose, but with high hopes. Those hopes are now in the course of being dashed. W. H. Auden said :

"We must love one another or die."

Love is in short supply at Rio. Sadly, it is death which is now on the agenda.

5.37 pm

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