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Mr. Elliot Morley (Glanford and Scunthorpe) : Even though it does not work.
Mr. Ottaway : Whether it works or not, it is a purely subjective matter--it is a matter of individual conscience.
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If the Roman Catholic Church were to support modern methods--I am not saying that it should do so--think of the impact that that would have on public opinion.Economists may say that we should not be concerned about world population growth and that there is no problem. They may say that the Earth can sustain unlimited population growth, that it can feed unlimited numbers. They may ask why we should be concerned about literacy rates if they are rising. They may say that deaths caused by poverty are falling. One cannot quarrel with those arguments. However, are they right? That is not a reason to ignore population growth, as it is a problem. It devalues human life, affects the quality of life and has an impact on the environment. The sooner that population size is stabilised, the better it will be for the quality of life and for the world's environment.
In an earlier intervention, I mentioned that Indonesia is one of the great economic successes of the far east, and that the economic growth which started there in the 1960s was preceded by a crash family planning programme. Indonesia was not able to have sustained economic development until it was able to stabilise population growth.
If population growth is a problem, the question remains, what are we going to do about it? That is where I feel that the Rio summit is failing. It should be tackling that fundamental issue. It is estimated that about 300 million people are denied access to family planning. To put it mundanely, we want user-friendly family planning services for the third world to enable us to reduce fertility in those areas.
We need not become obsessed with the single issue of family planning. It has been shown that better educated women have smaller numbers of children, which means stable population levels. It all comes down to the need for more cash. I welcome the Overseas Development Administration's increase in funding for family planning programmes. I believe that it has increased by about 28 per cent. However, the amount of money being spent on population policies amounts to only 2 per cent. of the ODA budget. If it is such a fundamental issue, why are we holding back funding for something which could be so effective? The funding contributed is peanuts in terms of overall public expenditure.
Family planning and the education of women are not intellectually challenging issues, but they do more for the environment than almost anything else being debated at Rio.
8.48 pm
Mr. Elliot Morley (Glanford and Scunthorpe) : I welcome the opportunity to make some comments while the Rio summit is under way and to encourage the Government to press for some much-needed policies in an important international event of this kind. However, the Government must recognise that every member state at the conference must put its own house in order and they must ensure that each of us has a responsibility for dealing with environmental issues in our own country, rather than simply pointing the finger at the more spectacular cases of environmental destruction--especially those in the developing countries, such as the destruction of the rain forests in Latin America.
We have some serious problems in our own country, as has been mentioned, because of the damage and proposed
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damage to sites of special scientific interest. Every year, many of the sites, which are designated under a Government order, are destroyed and sometimes obliterated. The great weakness in the designation system needs to be examined very closely.There is also a weakness in the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, which was supposed to introduce management systems for resources and habitats similar to those being discussed at the Rio conference. Many millions of pounds are channelled into management agreements and some of that money is compensation for decisions such as not to plant trees. Some of that money is not being used in the most effective manner. When we consider the cost of environmental protection--there is undoubtedly a cost--some of the resources used in this country could be spent in far better ways than simply paying wealthy landowners large sums of money for not destroying SSSIs.
There has been much talk of the biodiversity treaty and there is no doubt that it is vital. I was sorry to hear some negative comments from some hon. Members about the nature of the scientific evidence of the real risks that are posed by problems such as global warming and biodiversity. Wildlife Link, which represents all the major conservation bodies in this country, worked very closely with the Department of the Environment in preparation for the conference and it supported the Department's intention to sign the treaty. It is of great concern that the Government are apparently back- tracking on that intention because of the United States reluctance to sign because it believes that that may involve the commitment of money or affect organisations such as the drug companies.
The wealthy northern states have a responsibility to channel resources to the developing world. The drug companies will be affected by some of the clauses in the treaty that cover discoveries from plants, mosses and other organisms found in the rain forest which can be used to develop important drugs. The countries in which those species are found are, not unreasonably, asking for a share of the development to help them to protect the forests. Why should not they have a share? Of course, there must be a proper, hammered-out agreement to determine how much money will be spent, where it will go and who will pay. I agree that those matters must be resolved. However, as a general principle, if multinational companies are making profits from developments that originated in developing countries, and particularly in their forests, there is nothing unreasonable in the companies paying a levy on the drugs that are produced. The multinational drug companies are not exactly short of resources or profits, and it is perfectly legitimate to argue that the money is returned to the country from which it derived. That will also help in the protection of the rain forests.
At the moment, when there is pressure on forests, either through a need for farmland or if the people living there think that quick profits can be made by chopping down the wood for logging, the forests will disappear and that process will be encouraged. If it can be shown that forests can be managed in a sustainable way to produce items such as wood, rubber and drugs of the kind to which I referred much more emphasis will be placed on protecting them.
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Population control has also been mentioned in the debate. It is an important issue which will have to be discussed at the Rio conference. Population, poverty and environmental destruction are connected. We do not want to approach the problem in a patronising manner and insist that developing countries control the growth in population, and we should not pretend that this issue does not affect the developed north. That is not the way to approach the problem. Some of the reasons for over- population are poverty, infant mortality and the fact that many families have many children because the children are needed to ensure that the parents are provided for in old age in countries where there is no social security system and because many of the children will die during their upbringing. We need to tackle those issues, but it is fair to say that much more could be done towards population control. Mention has been made of the Catholic Church's attitude, and I think that Dr. Carey was right in his criticims of that attitude. However, the Catholic Church has played an important and progressive role in combating poverty and in the work that it does in developing countries. I admire the Catholic Church for what it has done, but it could do so much more if it could shake off the shackles of outdated theological dogma. In fact, that dogma is on shaky theological grounds. Although it is not for me to argue the Catholic Church's position, there are progressive elements within the church who feel that the time has come to review its position on population control. Because of its proud record in combating poverty and promoting overseas development, the church could set a tremendous example and be a force for good in many ways. We need to play our role. Hon. Members have referred to the talks on the general agreement on tariffs and trade and to CITES, and those agreements must be enforced. One of the problems for the developing world is that much of the environmental destruction has taken place with the encouragement and the collusion of northern-based multinational companies. We, as individual consumers, are also to blame. For example, our taste for large tropical prawns has led to the destruction of much of the coastal forest and mangrove swamps in many Asian countries in order to satisfy wealthy northern consumers. Individuals, as well as Governments, have a responsibility, because we demand goods which are produced in an environmentally destructive way.Many people are not aware of the way in which food is produced and in which timber is produced and harvested. Ecological labelling on products would be a great help. The banning of the importation of hardwoods which are felled in an unsustainable fashion at the behest of all European countries would also be a great help. Enforcement of the CITES regulations would also have an effect.
One of the current problems which is being widely debated in the European Community is the importation of wild birds. That is an example of what can go wrong when there is uncontrolled exploitation of a natural resource. Importing birds caught in the wild is not only cruel but involves the destruction of forests in order to collect such rare species as wild parrots from their nests. The easiest way to collect them as nestlings is to chop down a tree and remove them from their nest in the trunk. That is being done to satisfy demand in the wealthy northern countries of Europe.
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We need to bring this trade under control by means of a total ban on the importing of these species. We should then allow a controlled, sustainable trade in species which have been brought in by our aviarists to improve breeding stock. This is a good example of how the Government, through the European Community, can take action to deal with a trade that is both uncontrolled and damaging. Following criticism, the World bank has reformed itself to a large degree--but it could do a great deal more. It has been responsible for funding a large number of development projects that have damaged the environment and been of doubtful economic value to the countries concerned.I hope that the Ministers who attend Rio will not be too influenced by the United States. The attitude that the United States has adopted to controlling carbon emissions and to the biodiversity treaty has been very depressing--as has the fact that it has been influenced by American drug companies and multinationals. The attitude that President Bush has adopted seems tailored more to short-term political gain for himself than to the long-term interests of his country, our country and the whole world.
The symbol of the earth conference is a hand holding the globe. The summit is certainly one of the most important milestones in the history of the world, designed as it is not to stop immediately--the situation is far too grim for that--but to start to tackle the continual destruction of much of our planet and many of our rain forests. It will tackle the problems of pollution and of pressure on our natural resources and the way in which they have been squandered for far too long for far too little gain. I hope that the logo of the summit will not come to symbolise an opportunity slipping through the fingers of the conference because delegates to it were motivated not by the interests of the future generations of young people who will inherit the consequences of these decisions but by self-interest. We must not lose this chance ; we must ensure that the treaties are signed and that we begin a process of sustainable development, of harmony and of mutual support between the rich north and the poor south.
9 pm
Mr. Gyles Brandreth (City of Chester) : As the clock strikes nine, I come to the House with a message from the city of Chester. It is a message that I had not expected to be able to bring, because I did not receive it until about two and a half hours ago, when I found myself on the telephone speaking to one of my constituents. She was surprised to find that I could speak on the telephone, because yesterday I had assured her that I would not be able to because I had packed my pyjamas, sponge bag and toothbrush in preparation for a long night in Maastricht.
Instead, I find myself having a short evening in Rio. My constituent was delighted when I told her that, finding the fact that the House had turned from the issue of Europe to that of the future of the world encouraging. She said, "You have got your priorities right. Instead of continuing to contemplate your Euro-navel, you are actually coming face to face with the life-or-death issue of the future of the planet."
This was a reminder to me of how passionately people feel about the environment, and of how important they see the summit. I refer particularly to the 20 per cent. of my constituents who, like 20 per cent. of the population in
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general, are under the age of 18 and do not vote. In conversation with them, the issue that emerges first and foremost is that of the future of our planet.It heartens me that, in Chester, at least 11 groups are actively involved in the cause of the environment. One of them is a group called RESULTS, and it was a member of that group to whom I spoke on the phone. Its members have urged me to bring a message to the House--that we must welcome the Rio declaration and sign up to the two key conventions, on climate change and on biodiversity.
This country has taken the lead and shown the way in these matters, and environmental groups such as those in my constituency urge us not to lose our nerve. Of course it is unrealistic to sign a blank cheque ; we must not allow the issue to exacerbate the so-called north-south divide. None the less, we must go the extra mile : we must give the environment the benefit of the doubt. These conventions, whether modified or allowed to stand, are important markers on the way to a more careful, more caring and more sharing planet.
My constituents urge us not to let our excellent Secretary of State for the Environment or our admirable Prime Minister merely go to Rio to say the right things. They ask us to get them to do the right things and urge them to sign even a weakened convention, because it could lead to a stronger one.
The Rio summit is an enormous enterprise on a quite colossal and ambitious scale. Some 12,000 delegates have made their way there and it is alarming to think of the amount of fuel that has been consumed. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Perth and Kinross (Sir N. Fairbairn) spoke about paperwork. He called it bumf--a Scottish expression with which I am not familiar. However, we know what he means. Whole forests have been used to produce paper for what the hon. and learned Gentleman called "this jamboree". But the summit must be more than that. It is a world gathering to discuss critical issues, and my constituents know that even if some hon. Members do not.
One of my constituents told me that he witnessed the number of hon. Members in the Chamber for the Prime Minister's statement on Europe and asked me to report on how many would be present for this important debate on the future of our planet. I shall not report the figure in full, because it might slightly dishearten my constituents. They wish the Secretary of State for the Environment and the Prime Minister well in Rio but urge us not to leave it just to them. They want hon. Members to play a part as well.
Hon. Members spoke about the World Wide Fund for Nature and its pledge for the tree of life. Some hon. Members have signed that pledge and we hope that our pledges will hang on a tree in Rio not as an empty gesture but because we want to contribute. Some people have said that they will attempt to use 10 per cent. less oil, gas or electricity and some assured me yesterday that they were pledging to use 10 per cent. less petrol by curtailing the use of their cars. That will be a challenge for some hon. Members, because with our mileage allowance it will be possible to compare last year's consumption with this year's. Perhaps it will be a real sacrifice. The concept of Rio is not remote. It is not a warm feeling or an opportunity to make the right kind of noises about the environment. It is an opportunity to make a difference and my constituents have challenged us to play our part by conserving energy, by recycling and by remembering that small actions count and can make a
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difference. In William Blake's famous dictum, he who would do good must do it by minute particulars. We urge those in Rio to take major steps and I hope that the rest of us will make minute but important contributions.9.7 pm
Mr. Alan W. Williams (Carmarthen) : I am glad that at last we are having a debate on the Earth summit, even though it was unplanned. We have heard many interesting speeches but unfortunately three or four Conservative Members have shown the Government in a poor light. I refer especially to the hon. Members for Billericay (Mrs. Gorman) and for Wycombe (Mr. Whitney) and the hon. and learned Member for Perth and Kinross (Sir N. Fairbairn). There is a strong consensus that the Government should go to Rio with a positive attitude and should try to bring about some improvement in the global environment. It has taken a long time to prepare for the Rio summit. I have followed these affairs for the past 20 years from the time of the Stockholm summit. In the 1970s after the OPEC oil price rise there was much talk about a new economic order. There were many meetings of UNCTAD, the UN conference on trade and development, and we had the Brandt report and later the Brundtland report. The only major agreement that has been signed in those 20 years was the Montreal protocol on the protection of the ozone layer. That was a tremendous step and led to international agreement on phasing out CFCs. That has not been done as quickly as perhaps it should have been, given the 20 per cent diminution in the winter concentrations of ozone. The problem is so serious that perhaps we should have a much more rapid phase-out of CFCs.
An enormous amount of groundwork has been done in preparation for the summit, starting with the global warming convention. Some Conservative Members, particularly the hon. Member for Billericay, questioned the scientific evidence on this, but there is an overwhelming consensus that we are faced with a serious, long-term threat of global warming and climatic change resulting from the combustion of fossil fuels and the burning of the rain forests. Carbon dioxide concentrations are increasing and the consensus view of the world's leading scientists is that global temperatures will increase by between 0.5 and 3 deg C by 2030 and perhaps by as much as 5 deg C over the next 100 years. We must take steps to prevent that happening, and that means that we must first stabilise and then reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
The target of stabilising carbon dioxide emissions by the year 2000 looks ambitious, but the ways in which we can achieve that make good sense. It could be achieved mainly through energy efficiency and proper insulating of houses, factories and places of work, and by district heating schemes to use waste from power stations and new sources of energy. All those energy efficiency measures make excellent economic sense as well, because they enable us to produce more efficiently and therefore cheaply. It disappoints me that successive Governments in the past 15 or 20 years have not taken the importance of insulation seriously enough.
It is sad, in these latter days of preparation for the convention on global warming, to see Britain dragging its
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feet because the United States is reluctant to accept it. We have fallen out of line with the rest of the European Community. Germany, Denmark, Holland, France and Italy have been in the forefront of putting the environment on the global political agenda. If Britain were working constructively with them, the European Community would be the leading force for change. We would pull Japan and Canada with us and isolate the United States, shaming it into action on these fronts.It is a symbol of that problem that the European environment Commissioner, Ripa di Meana, has decided, largely because of Britain's attitude and the lack of consensus in the Community, not to go to Rio. The one person in Europe, perhaps in the world, who has done most to improve the global environment will not be at the Rio summit.
Many hon. Members have spoken about the convention on biodiversity. Tropical rain forests are a precious resource which is being destroyed at the prolific rate of an area the size of Britain every year. Many species are under threat of extinction. About one half of the world's species could be destroyed in the next 50 years if this carries on unchecked. Global warming is an important factor, but so, too, are the precious resources that will be lost. They provide drugs and medicines that we shall desperately need in the future. I accept that the financial implications of the convention on biodiversity cannot be implemented. We cannot sign huge blank cheques to reach agreement. However, I hope that the noises that we have heard over the past week or 10 days are aimed simply at lowering our expectations and that, by the end of the two weeks of the summit, agreement will be reached. We must not allow further destruction of the rain forests.
A likely and important step forward at Rio will be the setting up of the commission for sustainable development. The House will be aware that part of the Brundtland report is devoted to sustainable development. Every country will be required to produce a full national plan.
Britain's population is static and our land use and food production seem to present no problems. Indeed, we are producing too much rather than too little. There are serious problems, however, with pollution, use of resources and carbon dioxide emissions, and these must be tackled. The framing of national plans will pose major challenges. Agenda 21 refers to ways of relieving the problems of the third world, such as poverty, ill- health, inadequate water supply and malnutrition. I am disappointed that it contains nothing about population. Two Conservative Members have made major contributions to the major problems that are associated with population growth. We do not, however, tackle the problems simply by providing family planning or contraception on a large scale. The solution is much more complicated than that. We must tackle the problems of infant mortality, poverty, inadequate water supply and primary health care, and that requires finance.
The United Nations estimate of the financial commitment that will stem from the Rio summit is $125 billion. That sounds an enormous figure until we consider the world's gross domestic product. In that context, $125 billion is about 0.3 or 0.4 per cent. of the GDP of the advanced countries. In other words, there needs to be a commitment of about one third of 1 per cent., and that fits quite neatly into the aid budget. We have been asked for
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decades to aim for the target of 0.7 per cent. of our wealth for overseas development, but Britain's contribution has fallen from 0.5 per cent. to 0.27 per cent. That is a sad commentary on the past 12 years of Conservative government.The changes that have taken place in Russia and eastern Europe generally mean that the cold war is at an end. For the next five, 10 or 20 years we can look forward to deep cuts in defence expenditure. That is the peace dividend. I have no doubt that the primary call on resources that are now being set free following the changes in east-west relations will be the tackling of the north-south problem. The resources should be used to improving and developing the global environment.
9.19 pm
Mrs. Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) : We have had a good debate in which several hon. Members on both sides of the House have made extremely significant contributions which the Government would do well to heed. Over the past few weeks many people have written to me asking if and when we shall have a debate on issues of major importance that are to be discussed at UNCED. It is ironic that, at the eleventh hour and after considerable Opposition pressure, only because the Government found themselves with nothing to debate today did they rush through, as a stop gap, a debate on the Earth summit.
Whatever the outcome of the summit, the issues that it will consider have been widely explored in the press and on television, and that has raised the level of consciousness in Britain. My hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) emphasised the importance of television in bringing home to the public the challenges that confront us in tackling the global environment. Today, the Secretary of State for the Environment reiterated the Prime Minister's remark that UNCED is the start of the process. We have news for the Government. The process began decades ago. Others understood it well before the Stockholm conference of 20 years ago, when Norway's Prime Minister, Gro Harlem Brundtland, said : "The environment is where we live, and development is what we do in that abode. The two are inseparable."
We are in the third decade of a series of environmental and development conferences.
Today, we were lobbied by the University of London Union, whose letter to me is typical of many that I received over the past few weeks :
"We are particularly disappointed at the way in which development issues have not been given priority on the UNCED agenda. We believe that unless the root causes of underdevelopment and poverty are tackled, development in many countries will never be possible, and the desperate struggle for people simply to survive will override only long-term or environmental population considerations. We feel especially strongly about the fact that millions of innocent young children die every year simply through lack of the very basic necessities of life, which in a world of plenty must be the deepest tragedy of all."
I am sure that we all share that sentiment. The letter adds : "We had been hoping that UNCED would result in real changes to put an end to such injustice--and in our optimism, we hope that can still happen. We believe that Britain is in a particularly unique position to take the lead in putting forward such proposals and to influence other nations to do likewise We feel that such an important event as UNCED should be more fully discussed and debated in Parliament." We have felt that for a long time, and we are grateful that the Government, even at the eleventh hour, have chosen to debate the subject.
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Last year, an interesting report was published by the Global Environment Research Centre in conjunction with the United Nations Association. "Institutions and Sustainable Development : Meeting the Challenge" examines what was done by various Government Departments to prepare for the Rio summit. It concluded :"Analysis of developments in Whitehall shows lack of effective overall co- ordination. Environmental considerations are still largely peripheral rather than central to policy making in most Departments of State--not least in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, whose failure to take seriously the long-term threat to national security from global environmental degradation has far broader implications." The report considered all Government Departments in detail, to establish the extent of their preparations for the Earth summit, and concluded that they amounted to a hotch-potch, and that the task had not been tackled in a systematic or comprehensive way.
Mr. Whitney : Will the hon. Lady expand a little on what she considers to be a long-term threat to what she has described as global environmental degradation?
Mrs. Clwyd : I shall be pleased to do so later in my speech. Let us look at the Government's record. Yesterday, my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition asked the Prime Minister whether he agreed that widespread poverty in the third world was a major cause of damage to the world's environment, and what new action he proposed in Rio to combat that poverty more effectively. The Prime Minister replied :
"We have dramatically increased in real terms the amount of aid".--[ Official Report, 2 June 1992 ; Vol. 208, c. 703.] That simply is not true. In 1990, Britain spent a mere 0.27 per cent. of gross national product on aid--the lowest figure on record, as the Minister for Overseas Development admitted in the House last year.
On that occasion, the Minister was asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) :
"Is it not true that last year, as a proportion of GDP, Britain spent less than it has ever done since the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development began keeping records?"
The Minister replied :
"The answer is yes. I do not like it any more than anybody else does".-- [ Official Report, 14 October 1991 ; Vol. 196, c. 18.] The truth is that the Government have cut by half the amount and value of official development aid to the third world since they came to power in 1979. When we left office in that year, aid stood at 0.51 per cent. of GNP and was rising. That cut in aid has deprived the poor of Africa, Asia and Latin America of more than £10 billion. I believe that those figures are the best indicator of the importance that a political party or country attaches to overseas development. Given the current claimed rate of growth in aid, it could take the British Government more than 95 years to reach the United Nations target of 0.7 per cent. of GNP. Are we prepared to stand back and let another 1,387 billion children die in the meantime?
Mr. Howard : The hon. Lady is addressing the point at great length and in highly emotive terms, as she always does. Of course this is a serious point, but such observations would come much better from the hon. Lady and her right hon. and hon. Friends if only two months ago, at the time of the general election, they had been
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prepared to include a commitment to increasing aid in one of the two categories of spending to which they were prepared to commit themselves immediately. I hope that the hon. Lady will now confirm that Labour was prepared to increase aid spending only as and when resources allowed it--and we all know that resources would never have allowed it.Mrs. Clwyd : There is a major difference between the attitudes of Conservative and Labour Members. We said that our aim was to reach the target of 0.7 per cent.of GNP within five years. Only two weeks ago, in the European Community, the British Government refused to reach that target by the year 2000, and blocked other EC countries that wanted to make that commitment. I do not think that the right hon. Gentleman has any right to challenge our commitment when his party clearly has no commitment of any kind to reach that 0.7 per cent. target.
The Government have cut not only the overall aid budget but the percentage of assistance that they give to various United Nations organisations. It is shameful that, when the whole world is talking about the Earth summit and the gap between the rich and the poor on our planet, the British Prime Minister should go to the Dispatch Box and get his figures wrong. Is he trying to dupe people into believing that the British Government really care about the needs of the third world? If the agreements reached at UNCED are to be fully implemented, the United Nations has a critical role to play.
While the Government have continued to pay lip service to the role of the United Nations, they have savaged Britain's support to some of the key United Nations agencies since 1979. They have cut their support for the United Nations children's fund by 44 per cent. in real terms. No one can doubt the effectiveness of an organisation such as UNICEF in the third world. The British Government have cut their support for the United Nations Fund for Population Activities by 65 per cent. It is a bit rich when I hear Conservative Members talk about the importance of population activities in the third world if at the same time they are prepared to sit back and allow the Government to cut their support for that very important fund. The Government have also cut their support for the United Nations Development Fund by 57 per cent.
In the three years that I have been speaking on this brief I have seen for myself the effects on people in Asia, Africa and South America of living in the hopelessness and the grind of daily poverty. In Cambodia, still one of the poorest countries in the world, one finds, more than a decade after Pol Pot, that it is still denied the kind of development aid that it should be receiving from Britain and the United States. When I saw Cambodia's health Minister just two weeks ago and he thanked me for the pressure that I was putting on the Government to increase aid to Cambodia, I thought about what might have happened had we been in government. We should have ensured that one of the poorest countries in the world got the aid to which it was entitled.
I have seen for myself in Ethiopia queues of women waiting to get contraceptive advice through the United Nations Development Programme and through the United Nations Fund for Population Activities. I know that in Ethiopia the UNDP and the UNFPA simply do not
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have the money to do the job. In Iraq I have heard the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees bewail the fact that there are things that they would like to do in northern Iraq to alleviate the plight of the still suffering Kurds. I know that the UNHCR has been told again that money is not available and that in desperation the UNHCR has said, "Give us the money and we can do the job." If Conservative Members are serious about wanting to help the third world, they must give money so that the organisations working there are able to do the job.Another myth that the Government have sought to spread concerns their record on debt reduction. In 1990 Britain took more money in dept repayments from third world countries than it gave in aid, a fact to which my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham) referred. In more than 40 nations termed by the World bank as severely indebted, debt payments have swallowed up over a third of all their trade earnings in recent years. The Government have made a lot of noise about their proposals for debt reduction--the Trinidad terms. However, it is worth bearing in mind that, even if the initiative had been implemented fully in line with the original proposal, it would have resulted only in 1 per cent. of the total third world debt being written off. Even that very limited proposal has not been fully implemented. What about the other 99 per cent.? Perhaps the Minister can tell the House which countries have benefited from the Trinidad terms and the corresponding amounts of debt which have been written off.
The Government have refused to take any steps to encourage the cancellation of debts owed by poor countries to the commercial banks. They have blocked proposals for reducing debt owed to the European Community. They have refused to take action to reduce debt owed by the poorest countries to other multilateral agencies. And what of trade? My hon. Friend the Member for Itchen asked many questions about trade. One might have expected that a Government who are concerned, as they profess, about the environment and development, in a country which has many historic and continuing links with the Commonwealth, would have been more vigorous in examining the impact of the Single European Act and the current general agreement on tariffs and trade negotiations on the poorer countries. It is also worth bearing in mind the issue of aid tied to the purchase of British goods. Why is it that, again, the United Kingdom has the highest percentage of tied aid among members of the development assistance committee of the OECD?
The political tensions at UNCED are not difficult to understand. The poor countries are telling the rich countries that they want action on their pressing environmental priorities. For the Brazilians living in the shanty towns around Rio and for the African peasant farmer, the top environmental issues are dirty drinking water and poor sanitation which kill their children by the thousand. Three million children are said to die every year from diarrhoea caused by drinking dirty water. Another important issue is the daily search for the shrinking supplies of fuel wood that they use to cook their daily food. The World Health Organisation reported recently that 2.5 billion people suffer illnesses resulting from insufficient or contaminated water. Those are the life and death environmental issues that threaten poor countries today. Poverty is a cause of environmental degradation. Meanwhile, the Governments of richer countries, including our own--
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Mr. Whitney rose --Mrs. Clwyd : I have already given way to the hon. Gentleman and time is short.
Governments have tried to shift attention to the issues of climate change, population, forestry and, until recently, biodiversity. The original climate change convention has been considerably weakened because of the role of the United States and the United Kingdom. Over the past 130 years or more the impacts of industrial development have accelerated and accumulated to the point where the climatic stability of the biosphere is being affected, raising serious questions about the future well-being of our planet. The sources of that pollution have overwhelmed the sink capacity of the planet.
The United States has singlehandedly provided 33 per cent. of accumulated industrial carbon dioxide pollution. To salvage its conscience, it is now prepared to spend a large sum of money on forestry projects in poorer countries, which will act as a further sink for its carbon dioxide emissions. Thanks to the United States and United Kingdom Governments, the climate convention to be discussed at Rio makes no commitment to reducing emissions of global warming gases. The United Kingdom Government have, in effect, been instrumental in facilitating what amounts to polluter sovereignty on behalf of richer countries. In other words, it is business as usual ; carry on polluting.
The Secretary of State and my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen (Mr. Williams) talked about the importance of ever-increasing population levels, particulary in the south. We accept that it is important to look at population growth, but it needs to be looked at in conjunction with other key issues affecting the environment and development, including consumption levels.
According to a report on development and environment prepared for Rio by the World bank, women hold the key to prosperity because they control their fertility and the fertility of the soil. According to a multi-country study a secondary education reduces from seven to three the number of children a woman has. It concluded that educating women was the biggest solution to poverty and environmental destruction. That point was well made by my hon. Friend the Member for Glanford and Scunthorpe (Mr Morley).
The Earth summit has been greeted with deep pessimism by the contemptuous words of President Bush--the President who boasted during his election campaign that he would be the "environment president". We now have the grudging words of our own Prime Minister. He is warning us that expectations must not be set too high. For President Bush to pull out of the biodiversity convention, after it had been broadly agreed, on the eve of the Rio summit, and for the United Kingdom, which had apparently taken the lead in urging the convention and been admired for doing so, to wax hot and then cold, yet again apeing the President of the United States, is unbelievable but not unexpected. After all, President Bush has provided a veil for those who want to dodge their own responsibilities.
We must face the fact that the summit cannot merely tackle the symptoms of environmental damage but must deal with the causes. Delegates are grappling not merely with plans to clean up the world but with reaching agreement on a pattern of economic development that will avoid fresh damage in the future. The Earth summit must
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start us on the road to curing the disease of unsustainable development and global poverty and not indulge in attempts to administer sticking plasters to the world's festering environmental wounds. Forced to live hand to mouth, the poor have no choice but to chop down their trees or to overfarm soils merely to survive. It should now be absolutely clear that we must deal with the economic root causes--and the gulf between the rich and poor nations is one such cause.I am reminded of our priorities by an interesting supplement. For example, in the United Kingdom the Government spent £55.2 million on military bands in one year. In the developing world, that could pay for 500 trucks and spares to be bought and shipped to Africa, survival kits for 1.1 million Cambodian families with pots, pans, sheeting, mats and food. There is a long list of other priorities which have been chosen by the Government, priorities that I suggest we reconsider.
I shall go to Rio on Friday on behalf of my party and I shall follow the issues with great interest. I shall follow especially the way in which in the global forum the Prime Minister decides his and his Government's priorities. Unless we act, and act conclusively, at Rio, the outcome in the long term will be disaster for us all. The reality is that, whether we live in the poor south or in the rich north, we all share the same planet. Whether it is global warming or the destruction of the rain forests, whether it is disasters such as AIDS which know no boundaries, or whether it is terrorism or religious fanaticism, the truth is that we are all linked together and there is no way we can or should escape those challenges. 9.42 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Mark Lennox-Boyd) : We have had a most interesting and fairly full debate, and I am glad to have the opportunity to wind up. There is a delicious irony in the fact that the hon. Members for Dagenham (Mr. Gould) and for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd) who opened and closed the debate for the Opposition respectively are bitterly opposed to their party's policy on the European Community. It is a delicious irony that the Danish decision has given rise to this debate.
I am glad that we have been able to listen to interesting contributions on this important subject from hon. Members of all parties. The issue is of the gravest importance to us all. It is of the greatest concern to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, as it was to his predecessor, who played such an important part in the late 1980s, and to the Government, who supported the formation of United Nations conference on environment and development. It is my responsibility to comment on the contributions that have been made today. My right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State, who opened the debate, gave way many times, but I hope that hon. Members will understand that I will probably not be able to do so, although I have always done so in the past.
UNCED is part of a continuing process. It is in no sense the end of a process or a race. It is probably the most important conference on the environment so far. It follows the Stockholm conference of 20 years ago. In December 1989 the United Nations General Assembly decided to hold this conference to review progress since the
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Stockholm gathering, but the Earth summit is not merely a follow on--it is part of a process that will continue after the meeting in Rio.That observation makes me very depressed about the contributions from the hon. Members for Dagenham and for Cynon Valley, because they have prejudged the outcome of UNCED before it has properly started. It has been going for only one day. The hon. Member for Dagenham told us about the "failure" of Rio, and the hon. Member for Cynon Valley gave us a disparaging description of President Bush's remarks. The hon. Member for Dagenham quoted W. H. Auden and told us that death was on the agenda.
I find it depressing, too, that neither of the Opposition Front-Bench spokesmen showed any recognition of the need for co-ordinated action. They talked about some sort of reactionary collusion between the United States and the United Kingdom, but they did not recognise that for progress to be made there has to be co-ordinated action, and compromises, which do not please all the purists, have to be made. Compromises are an essential part of progress, as we know from all the other matters in life.
My hon. Friend the Member for Honiton (Sir P. Emery), in a well-placed intervention, asked the hon. Member for Dagenham whether he would have handed over control of funding to the recipient countries. He failed to obtain a proper answer to that question. Instead, the hon. Gentleman comforted himself with some notion that the contribution that we should have to pay under the
convention--which we have not yet signed, but which, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State said, we hope that we shall be able to sign after further discussion and negotiation--would be smaller than what I presume he meant would be the contribution to the cohesion fund under the Maastricht agreement. The hon. Gentleman should read the text. He is a lawyer, and he should see what the maximalist interpretation of the text in article 21 could amount to. I do not imagine that he has read the text, and that is why he can say such things.
The hon. Member for Dagenham spoke with some pride of his belief in the politics of intervention. He completely overlooked a fact to which I am glad that attention was drawn by some of my hon. Friends--how disastrous intervention has been for the environment in some parts of the world, such as the Soviet Union. The Aral sea and the Caspian sea have been polluted by Governments whose misguided intervention has failed to protect the environment.
I shall now deal with an aspect that was mentioned by the hon. Members for Dagenham and Cynon Valley, by the hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham), and by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Mr. Lester), who made it clear that the conference is not, as the debate should not be, about aid and debt. We recognise that aid and debt have an important part to play, but they are not the central issues of the conference.
Mr. Lennox-Boyd : Let me make my point. I was talking about debt. The Overseas Development Administration has relieved the poorest countries of £1 billion in old aid
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debt--hon. Members should note that figure. Twenty countries have benefited from the Toronto terms, which resulted from a United Kingdom initiative to reduce the official debts of the poorest countries. In 1990 the Prime Minister, who was then the Chancellor of the Exchequer, launched the Trinidad terms, involving a proposal to write off two thirds of the oldest stock of bilaterial debt of the poorest, most heavily indebted countries. In 1991 the Paris club began to implement those terms. [Interruption.] I was asked a question about this, and I shall answer it. Five countries--Benin, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Tanzania and Equatorial Guinea--have benefited so far. More are in the pipeline. More important is the fact that the United Kingdom continues to press for full implementation of the Trinidad terms.The latest OECD figures, for 1990, show that the net flow of all forms of resources towards developing countries amounts to £26 billion-- [Interruption.] I am coming to the other figure. The United Nations debt figures appear to show that developing countries are paying more than they receive. I am sure that hon. Members have heard this before, but it has to be repeated every time because they will not accept it. The reason is an accounting convention which shows that debt foregiveness is to be incorporated as a payment. [Laughter.] Hon. Members may laugh and we can all laugh at accounting terms. We all know that accounting terms are sometimes laughable. The fact is that when one writes off debt, it is considered to be a debt payment. That is how accountants do it and that is why the figures look as they do. The important point is that, in reality, developing countries are net recipients of resources from the United Kingdom and the allegations made on the point betray a failure to understand the figures. [Hon. Members :-- "They do not want to understand."] They do not want to understand.
Mr. Denham : Will the Minister give way?
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