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Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I have already had words with hon. Members about sedentary comments.
Mr. Robathan: I was intending to make a point about one or two of the things the Secretary of State said earlier.
As my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Devon (Mr. Streeter) pointed out, the amount of aid appears to be falling. I hope that the Secretary of State will be able to tell us that it is not falling from a proposed £76.5 million to £70 million over the next two years.
The real crisis in Mozambique has nothing to do with flooding; it is to do with HIV and AIDS. The black death is stalking Africa, at least sub-Saharan Africa. I know that the Secretary of State is aware of that, because her Department does a great deal.
Thousands have been killed in the floods. Mozambique has a population of more than 18 million, of whom probably 4 million are infected with HIV, although it is difficult to tell.
Dr. Tonge:
The black death was, in fact, the bubonic plague, which stalked Europe in mediaeval times. If the hon. Gentleman was referring to the colour of the skins of people who suffer from AIDS, let me remind him that the disease affects those of all colours.
Mr. Robathan:
I am rather surprised by that intervention. I think the analogy with the black death is very valuable, because this disease is likely to have the same impact on sub-Saharan Africa as the black death had in Europe in the 14th century. As the hon. Lady must know, Africans, regrettably, have been particularly susceptible for a number of reasons. That is well known. If she does not want to call it the black death she can call it something else, but I think that "black death" is an emotive and analogous description.
Approximately 4 million people in Mozambique will probably die of HIV/-AIDS in the next five or six years, and the rate is increasing. We have inadequate data, but the infection rate is horrendous. We do have data for 1994 and 1996. In Maputo and Chimoio, both rates doubled--to nearly 20 per cent. in Chimoio. If that can happen in two years, God knows what the situation is now. As the Government know, the position is similar in Mozambique.
Why is the rate rising to such an extent? Access to health care in inadequate. It is hopeless as there is no infrastructure to convey it to people. The provision of drugs is not the main problem, although such supplies would be helpful. The main problems are ignorance, resistance to condom use for a number of reasons and astonishing promiscuity, linked with poor hygiene and a high rate of sexually transmitted disease. It is behaviour that needs to change. Education is desperately needed in that regard.
Elsewhere in Africa, the situation is also extremely bad. I shall not go into all the details, but this is a problem that the world must face. It is so enormous, however, that the world is turning its back on it.
The impact has a disproportionate effect on key members of society, such as teachers and doctors who have travelled more. The result is schools without teachers and hospitals without doctors. [Interruption.] I notice that there is certain amount of pressure on me to sit down. It is a responsibility of the indigenous Governments, but it is important that we direct our response more towards that enormous crisis than towards anything else. Millions there will be affected by that, whereas the flooding crisis is, proportionately, affecting very few.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael J. Martin):
I call Mr. Iain Duncan Smith--[Interruption.]
Mr. Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green):
I apologise, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for not being ready to rise. I was expecting you to call someone else.
I pay fulsome tribute to the volunteers and members of the armed forces whom the Secretary of State mentioned. Conservative Members pay tribute to them for their hard
work and the physical risk that they run. They are saving lives and no one is shooting at them, but that does not mean that, during those dangerous activities, they may not lose their own life.
This is not a witch-hunt. I wish to make it clear--the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Devon (Mr. Streeter) seems to have been taken wrongly by the Secretary of State--that the objective is to figure out what went wrong, so that lessons can be learned and so that, next time, it is possible that things can go right.
The hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) made a typically knowledgeable speech and raised some important points. She said that, in almost all these circumstances, the military has a big role to play. I agree. With operations of that scale, it is almost inconceivable that a national effort will not at some stage involve the military, at least discussing with it how to run the operation.
The lesson that the hon. Lady mentioned is that some things could have been done better. She said that Britain had taken the lead. If we look at the figures on the amount of aid, there is no question but that Britain is the most significant player in Mozambique. No one criticises that. We are all saying that that badge of honour should be worn by this country. Had the whole operation stopped in the early stages, there is no question but that it would rightfully have been worn by the Government, but that is not the whole question.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Wells), the Chairman of the Select Committee on International Development, made a good speech. He said "We were a bit late, but we were there." That is not a bad comment, but some of the real criticism stems from the fact that we were a bit late, certainly in the second half of the operation.
My hon. Friend maintains--I am interested in the matter--that helicopters were needed at least from 20 February. The Secretary of State for International Development probably agreed with that, although I did not hear her say it. My hon. Friend said that the early response was good. Again, I believe that that is important. The question is about the second half of the whole project: how good was that? He was right to say that OCHA should be criticised for leaving the area early, given what happened after it went.
My hon. Friend said that it was a Treasury problem. There is something in that. He was critical of the MOD. I am not entirely in agreement. I do not fully agree that it bears even 50 per cent. of the blame; I think that it bears far less, if any.
The hon. Member for Clydebank and Milngavie (Mr. Worthington)--I think that that is how the constituency is pronounced. [Interruption.] My apologies, I did not know how to pronounce it. It is not as bad as the pronunciation of my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Mr. Davies), who persists in mispronouncing Scots names.
Mr. Worthington:
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
The hon. Gentleman dealt with the early part and glossed over the later critical period. He dealt with the early aid in detail and said that it was well done but,
when he got to the critical bit about the MOD's involvement and what happened, he quickly glossed over that. I do not criticise him for doing that--I would if I were sitting on the Back Benches--but that is not the whole answer.
My hon. Friend the Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan) talked about communication problems and said that there should have been better communication between the Departments. I agree. He is fundamentally right. I was in the area at the time that Samora Machel was--I am tempted to say it--on the throne in Mozambique. As we all know, the running of the country at that stage was a complete and unmitigated disaster. Obviously, a number of parties bear responsibility for that.
Much of what we see is a result of that, but we also need to ask what happened to those from Zimbabwe. Where were they? The answer is that they were fighting a war somewhere, probably protecting their president's investments in another country. The shame that they carry is the shame that happens when people get their priorities wrong. I hope that they sort that out in due course.
Questions arise; that is the key point. The Secretary of State for Defence should answer some specific questions. The problem is that the impression is that the Secretary of State for International Development and the Defence Secretary did not engage in conversation or discussion about the matter at an early enough stage.
I place most of the blame for that on the Secretary of State for International Development, because I do not think that she grasped the significance of the MOD from the outset. It behoves her to contact the MOD and to say that it is required. If she had said after the Thursday Cabinet meeting just before the weekend in question, "Come over here. What can we do? What can you do for me? What options are there on the table?", I have no doubt that the MOD would have responded immediately with a range of options. That is the nature of the MOD, but it was not asked those questions. That is the key issue.
For example, we have the wonderful mess over exactly when the Department for International Development was meant to have contacted the MOD. I read with great interest the verbatim account of the Select Committee proceedings. Mr. Holden, the official, was asked when the contact happened. He said:
The other important point is that the Department asked the wrong question. It seems that the only question that it asked the MOD was: "What have you got in the area?", to which the answer came, "What we have is 3,000 miles away and is on board a ship." That is a straight answer to a straight question. I have no criticism of that. Surely the question should have been, "What could you do to project helicopters down to Mozambique to put in some support?" Had the Department asked that question, it might have got a responsible answer, but it did not.
Another question is, exactly when was the Secretary of State informed about the answer from the MOD? She said:
Then we got into the unseemly dispute about money. Again, it is unseemly for the MOD to have to go into a bidding war with the Department for International Development over how much the operation could cost, but we have to be slightly fair to the MOD--I know that the Secretary of State will be worried by that comment: such operations cost money. What the figures are is a secondary issue. The MOD said that it would cost so much. The Secretary of State simply noted that and walked away.
A decision should have been made at that point--if money was not available, why did not Ministers immediately get on the telephone to the Prime Minister or to the Chancellor and say, "This is the problem. This is what it will cost to deal with it, but the Department cannot afford it. Can we cover that cost?"? Perhaps the Secretary of State for Defence himself could have done that. The point is that DFID Ministers knew that they could do that. The Ministry of Defence offered them an option, but they did not take it. That is the reality, as shown by the evidence.
The Prime Minister must have known about the situation the week before the problems became apparent. Although I appreciate that Thursday Cabinet meetings now last for only about 20 minutes--the Prime Minister does not need to know what everyone in Cabinet thinks, because he thinks it for them--the Prime Minister must have already known about the situation. He must also have approved plans for Britain to start taking serious action in Mozambique.
The Prime Minister was supposed to be taking a direct interest in the matter, but where was he in dealing with the subsequent problems? Why did he not say, "Pack up the arguments. Here's the solution--send the helicopters. That is what you're going to do." I suspect, however, that no one even bothered to contact him about that, and his advisers did not want him involved in it because it was looking a bit nasty and shabby. There was no Executive decision-making.
3.30 pm
I think it was 25/26th at about 8 o'clock at night.
There is the problem, because we are not certain even when the MOD was contacted. The MOD's version was different. It said that it was
On Saturday 26 February at around 2 o'clock,
so we have a difference of a day. No one seems to have a record of exactly when the Department contacted the MOD.
that was my understanding from advice that I received from the Ministry this morning--[Official Report, 28 February 2000; Vol. 345, c. 23.]
However, she told the Select Committee:
The answer on the Saturday was that they--
the MOD--
had nothing within 3,000 miles.
If the Department knew on the Saturday that the ship, which may have been available, was 3,000 miles away, why did it not decide, there and then, whether it required it to be moved? Had it taken the decision then, the ship would have been on station pretty close to the time that the Department finally had to ship the helicopters down for the following weekend. That is the key point. Early information was there, but nothing was done.
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