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Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Michael Lord): Order. Before I call the next Member to speak, I have observed that many hon. Members are still seeking to catch my eye, so unless contributions are reasonably short, many of them will be disappointed.
5.22 pm
Tony Baldry (Banbury): There are times when I think that the divisions in the Chamber are pretty stupid, because it is clear that on a subject such as this most of us are agreed. I have listened to the speeches of the Secretary of State, of the hon. Member for Glasgow, Maryhill (Ann McKechin) and of the hon. Member for Putney (Mr. Colman), and I suspect that we are all in agreement. I see in their place six hon. Members who serve on the International Development Committee. So far, our Committee has produced about 12 reports during this Parliament, which must amount to about 1,000 recommendations, all of which have been unanimous. There are so many issues on which we all agree that we sometimes need to think about how the House could express its collective view more effectively.
I want to ask the Secretary of State about the New Partnership for Africa's Development. We in the House are all passionate supporters of that new partnership, but it is a deal and a two-way deal, and many feel uncomfortable about countries such as Zimbabwe, Liberia and others. We are all Commonwealth parliamentarians in the House—all members of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association—but what has been happening in Zimbabwe is wholly unacceptable.
It is frustrating for all of us that President Mbeki of South Africa and others have not been more effective on that issue. He and I were students together at Sussex university. In fact, there are more Sussex university graduates in the South African Parliament than in the House, although there is quite a number in both. South Africa has tried the soft approach to Zimbabwe and it has not worked. To be honest, we should express our concern that more needs to be said about Zimbabwe. It is undergoing complete collapse, with huge rates of inflation that we can barely understand and many newspapers being closed down. That is wholly unacceptable.
On Sierra Leone, I am at a loss to understand the position of President Obasanjo of Nigeria over Charles Taylor. I understand that, from a realpolitik view, it was sensible to get Taylor out of Liberia, but he has been indicted by a UN war crimes tribunal. Indeed, we did much to set up that tribunal, and the deputy prosecutor in Sierra Leone is a United Kingdom Queen's Counsel. It was set up because the United States and United Kingdom Governments were concerned that al-Qaeda had been financed through blood diamonds from Sierra Leone.
One of the reasons for the UN treaty with Sierra Leone was the anticipation that sufficient prima facie evidence would be found to indict Charles Taylor for war crimes. He and his forces had the greatest responsibility for war crimes in Sierra Leone. We should remember that the war crimes in Sierra Leone involved people being asked whether they wanted to be left handed or right handed and a machete being taken to the other hand or arm. They were serious crimes, but Charles Taylor has been given political asylum in Nigeria. I genuinely do not understand that.
The House—not just the Government—needs to make it clear to our parliamentary colleagues in Nigeria and South Africa that we will do our bit in terms of development aid for Africa, but we expect them to do their bit in terms of governance. We are not asking a huge amount. All we are asking them to do is to exercise some influence on parliamentary colleagues in Nigeria and Zimbabwe and elsewhere. We are entitled to ask that collectively, as the House of Commons, and to look to the Government to say to President Mbeki and President Obasanjo that we expect them to do their bit.
We had an excellent debate in Westminster Hall last week on targets, so I shall say only that the litmus test for the Doha development round will be cotton. The Under-Secretary will have taken that on board and we will see what we manage to achieve.
Nor shall I say much about conflict, because we will have a debate on Thursday on the Quadripartite Committee's reports, which will give us the opportunity to talk about arms exports. I hope that one of the
millennium development goals will be to reduce substantially the number of children in Africa running around with AK47s. The hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Ms King) and others have worked hard on such issues as they affect the great lakes area. One of the real tragedies of northern Uganda and Sierra Leone has been the number of young people involved in perpetrating the conflict.
Ms Oona King (Bethnal Green and Bow): I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving me the chance to mention the golden opportunity facing the great lakes region at present. Very positive things are happening in Burundi, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and this is a wonderful opportunity for the House to show that we will support their transition to democracy along the lines of good governance, and how they can be full partners in NEPAD.
Tony Baldry: Everyone in the House would rejoice if we could achieve that, as they would if we could make advances in Sudan—it looks as if that might happen—and in Somalia, although that may be more difficult. That would be fantastic news, but there are far too many small arms swilling around in Africa. I hope that we can debate that issue on Thursday.
The hon. Member for Glasgow, Maryhill was right to remind us, with her long list of important statistics, that we have not yet achieved as much as many of us hoped we would on the HIPC programme and debt relief. We must not forget the issue. The tendency is to remember the Jubilee debt relief campaign and think that we have ticked that box, but work remains to be done.
I want to raise two matters with the Secretary of State. First, DFID's policy for many years has been about sustainable livelihoods. There is a real concern in Africa that sustainable livelihoods have tended to become subsistence livelihoods. A friend of mine is a parliamentarian in one of the west African states, and he said that Africa's was a "chickenfeed" economy.
Last year, the Select Committee on International Development reported on the humanitarian crisis in southern Africa. Many of our conclusions concentrated on ways of enhancing agriculture in Africa. I appreciate that these things go through cycles, and that concern about agriculture extension may look a bit passé, but we must enhance agricultural production in Africa, and enterprise. Understandably, much of DFID's work is devoted to health, education and good governance, but where are the new jobs to come from? Unemployment in the townships outside Johannesburg or Pretoria is about 60 or 70 per cent. How is that sustainable? How are we going to create new enterprise and new jobs in Africa, and attract foreign direct investment?
Secondly, the House displays enormous unity when it comes to wanting to enhance the position in Africa, but some uncomfortable truths remain. For many, the litmus test of whether we can address those truths is whether we can confront some of our parliamentary colleagues—in Zimbabwe, Liberia, Sierra Leone and some other countries—and tell them that what they are doing is unacceptable.
If we cannot do that, and be honest in our relationship with Africa, there is a real danger that we will continue merely to make great, Panglossian
speeches about HIV/AIDS and other matters that require real political leadership. We have a shared responsibility to say that the standards of behaviour acceptable in Africa must be as high as those that are expected elsewhere in the world. We will do our bit—and more than our bit—with NEPAD and other initiatives, but the compact must be mutual. Others must do their bit in the deal: if they do not, Africa will always be going backwards; if they do, Africa might be able to move forwards.5.32 pm
Hugh Bayley (City of York): I agree with the hon. Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) about the need for political leadership in Africa, but we also have to provide technical assistance. People can lead effectively only when they know where they are going.
I want to speak about HIV/AIDS in Africa. The Department has funded a collaboration between researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in London, at Johns Hopkins university in the US, and at Kintampo in Ghana. The research has identified an extremely cheap treatment that involves giving vitamin A supplements to children from birth to five years of age. The treatment dramatically reduces infection rates for tuberculosis, malaria and even mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS.
That work has been done in Africa, in collaboration with—and funded by—our Government. We need to provide that sort of technical information and assistance, to enable their leaders to lead. The treatment has been shown to be effective, and the hon. Member for Banbury is right to say that we should expect our Government to provide funding to roll it out across the continent—and that we should expect leaders in Africa to show that vitamin A is an important part of Africa's defence against opportunist infections.
Before we get too locked into gloom and doom about the enormous challenges faced by Africa, we should note that parts of Africa are developing and moving closer to the millennium goals. Between 1990 and 2000, according to the latest human development report from the United Nations Development Programme, the percentage of children completing five years of primary education in Namibia increased from 62 per cent. to 92 per cent. Over the same period, infant mortality in Uganda fell from 100 deaths per thousand live births to 79 deaths per thousand live births. In Ghana, the number of under-nourished adults and children fell from 35 per cent. to 12 per cent. of the population. With political leadership and development assistance, real progress can be made.
In many parts of the continent, however, things are moving backwards. Development is being undermined by bad governance, conflict, environmental degradation and the three great health pandemics of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. As has already been pointed out, 10 per cent. of the world's population live in Africa, but 70 per cent. of those who are HIV-positive live in that continent. AIDS has surpassed malaria as the most common cause of death in Africa and kills many, many more Africans each year than all the conflicts in that conflict-riven continent. By 2005, AIDS will kill more Africans than all other causes of death put together.
Life expectancy has fallen dramatically in many African countries. In Zimbabwe, average life expectancy has fallen from 59 to 43 years; in Botswana, it has fallen from 62 to 36 years. The population of South Africa—a developing country—is falling in absolute terms. It is almost unbelievable, but the population is being reduced due to the AIDS death toll. However, in other parts of Africa, such as Madagascar or Senegal, life expectancy is rising, because the prevalence of HIV/AIDS is much lower.
It is difficult to understand the scale of the crisis. In Botswana, for example, 39 per cent. of adults are HIV-positive. The figure is 34 per cent. in Zimbabwe, 20 per cent. in South Africa and 15 per cent. in both Malawi and Kenya. That means that 40 per cent. of the adults in Botswana will die over the next few years; one in three Zimbabwean adults with children will die, and one in five South Africans will die.
As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State so rightly pointed out, our continent has not faced a health catastrophe of that kind since the black death, which halved the population of our country. It took 400 years for our population to recover. That is a measure of the economic consequence of such a large-scale health crisis.
There is another parallel that we should use—hard though it is. About 20 million Africans have already died from AIDS. UNAIDS estimates that another 55 million could die by 2020. From 1500 until the end of the 19th century, the slave trade transported about 18 million Africans out of the continent and it probably killed about 50 million Africans, many of whom died before they left the coasts of Africa. However, the economic impact of the AIDS pandemic could be as great or greater than that of the slave trade, even though that trade may have been the reason that Africa fell behind other developing regions of the world.
The epidemic has social, political, economic and security implications. Several hon. Members have referred to the numbers of AIDS orphans. I have read that there are already 11 million AIDS orphans in Africa. Even if we could wave a magic wand to stop HIV infection instantly and completely, the number of orphans would continue to rise as those who are already infected die.
In 1995, there were virtually no AIDS orphans in South Africa. This year, there are about 500,000. By 2006, the number is likely to rise to 1 million; by 2008, to 1.5 million; and, by 2010, to something like 2 million children. If our children's services in the United Kingdom had to cope with that number of children, they would be utterly overwhelmed, and South Africa does not start with state children's services of the type that we have in this country.
By the time that parents die from AIDS, their families will already be in dire straits. A five-year retrospective study of AIDS-affected families in Zambia found that the average monthly disposable income for families with AIDS fell by 80 per cent. compared with non-infected families. So when they are orphaned the children are already malnourished and, more likely than not, they are already out of school and over-worked caring for siblings and trying to till the land to create an income for the family. The family are likely to have sold their possessions. When the parents die, their children often lose their homes as well.
When some AIDS specialists spoke to the all-party Africa group about AIDS in Africa recently, one of the researchers told us about meeting three children walking along a road in South Africa 20 miles from town. All three were stark naked and under the age of 10. When he talked to them, they said that their second parent had died that morning, but they had heard that their mother had a sister whom they had never met living in the town, and they were walking to town to try to find someone to care for them.
The social and economic consequences are enormous. In our report on the famine in southern Africa, the International Development Committee identified the HIV epidemic as a very important component of the crisis. We also identified that, first, the initial defence against HIV is food. Secondly, food shortages arise to a great extent because of the inability of so many families weakened by HIV to till the land and grow food. So technical work needs to be done in this country and in Africa, supported by our money, to find new crops that need less weeding, less watering and shallower ploughing. We can make a real contribution, so that the leadership in Africa can deliver some results.
We clearly saw the impact caused by the loss of specialists—the relatively few nurses and teachers and the very few economists and trade negotiators in developing countries. In a meeting with the Malawian agriculture department, we sat round a table with a dozen top officials. I forget exactly how many of them were HIV-positive—we were told after the meeting—but I think that it was four or five. In other words, a third of the top officials of the department of agriculture would be taken away from the Malawian Government, and they have no way to replace them.
The situation is absolutely dreadful, but it is not so dreadful that nothing can be done about it. The Secretary of State mentioned the positive policies that the Ugandan Government have pursued to combat problems there.
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