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Maternal Mortality
4. Ms Christine Russell (City of Chester): What recent progress has been made in meeting millennium development goal targets for reducing maternal mortality. [137786]
The Secretary of State for International Development (Hilary Benn): The proportion of women worldwide who gave birth with the assistance of a skilled health worker increased from 42 per cent. in 1990 to 52 per cent. by 2000. However, progress toward the millennium development goal target of reducing maternal mortality by two thirds by 2015 is too slow and unevenly spread across regions. We need faster progress, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, and that will only be achieved through commitment, international leadership and action where it matters, which is in the countries themselves.
Ms Russell: May I thank my right hon. Friend for his reply? I am delighted to hear that he acknowledges the scale of the problem. I do not know whether the House—[Interruption.]
Mr. Speaker: Order. Please allow the hon. Lady to be heard or it is unfair. [Hon. Members: "Hear, hear."] Perhaps those who are cheering will agree with me.
Ms Russell: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The greatest health divide in the world today is on maternal health. More than 500,000 women die every year as a result of complications during pregnancy or childbirth. I am delighted to hear that the Secretary of State wants to give greater priority to safe motherhood programmes. What are his views on providing more resources for traditional birth attendants simply to help with basic hygiene and reproductive health in the countries of sub-Saharan Africa?
Hilary Benn: There is a place for both within the system, although evidence from recent studies suggests that the biggest gain comes from enabling women who have complications in pregnancy to have access to a skilled birth attendant. So it is about training the traditional birth attendants to identify the signs and then to refer people. One of the programmes that we are supporting in Malawi, which I visited the year before last and where maternal mortality is a big problem, works with the ambulance service so that it understands that when it receives a call reporting complications in pregnancy, it prioritises the transport of the mother to hospital where she gets access to skilled advice and care.
Dr. Jenny Tonge (Richmond Park): Will the Secretary of State assure the House that despite the reorganisation of his Department, the emphasis on reproductive health in the developing world will not change, because reproductive health clinics are very important in reducing maternal mortality? Will he take the opportunity next week during the visit of the US
President to persuade him to restore the funding he has cruelly withdrawn from United Nations Population Fund programmes all over the world?
Hilary Benn: I am happy to give the hon. Lady the assurance she seeks on the Department's commitment to reproductive health. Although the Secretary of State has changed, that commitment will not. We give strong support, as she knows, to the UNFPA as an organisation. We take a different view of the UNFPA from the Americans precisely because—she will understand this only too well because of her experience—it is a way of making an important contribution to reproductive health and all the benefits that flow from that for women and their children.
Tony Baldry (Banbury): It is important to meet all the millennium development goals as much in middle-income countries as in least-developed countries. The Secretary of State may have missed the point. When extra money was needed in the past for Iraq or somewhere, the money would come from the Treasury's contingency reserve. One would expect the Secretary of State to get an extra £100 million out of the Chancellor specifically for that purpose rather than reducing mainstream budgets by £100 million. The concern is not just the £100 million, but the precedent that it sets for future spending on humanitarian and other crises. All that will happen is that DFID mainstream budgets will get screwed instead of the Secretary of State getting extra money from the Chancellor's contingency reserve.
Hilary Benn: The hon. Gentleman will know from his experience that part of DFID's job has always been to respond to humanitarian crises that arise. That is not new. He will be aware that most of the funding has come from other sources, including the central contingency reserve and our own contingency reserve. That has not affected our funding for humanitarian work or emergencies elsewhere. For example, since the conflict in Iraq, we have given extra funding to the Palestinian territories, to Liberia and to deal with the food crisis in southern Africa.
The hon. Gentleman also has to acknowledge that we have made a commitment to increase the proportion of the aid that we give to the poorest countries of the world. I am not prepared to change that commitment because with a rising aid budget, which is what we have got, we can provide greater benefit and do more good. Over the next two years, DFID's development budget will rise by nearly £1 billion a year.
Millennium Development Goals
5. Mr. James Plaskitt (Warwick and Leamington): If he will make a statement on the timetable for achieving the millennium development goals. [137787]
The Secretary of State for International Development (Hilary Benn): The millennium development goals include specific targets significantly to reduce poverty by, in most cases, 2015. The exceptions are the 2005 target for gender equality in schools and the 2020 target for improving the lives of slum dwellers. The headline target for halving absolute poverty between 1990 and 2015 looks likely to be met globally, but for most of the
other targets a significant increase in effort will be needed to meet the millennium development goal deadlines.
Mr. Plaskitt : It is a matter of concern that the timetable on many important objectives is slipping. Does my right hon. Friend agree that funding is a key to getting back on target? To that effect, does he agree that all creditors need to deliver debt relief under the heavily indebted poor countries initiative? How quickly can we get the international finance facility under way?
Hilary Benn: My hon. Friend is right about the importance of making further progress on debt relief, although we must recognise the $70 billion-worth of debt relief that HIPC has already delivered. The international finance facility proposed by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor is the best option on the table for increasing the resources that we need to help meet the millennium development goals between now and 2015. We are working hard to persuade our international partners to adopt the idea because it would allow us to make genuine progress.
Mr. John Bercow (Buckingham): I look forward to the truly formidable task of seeking to shadow such an eloquent Secretary of State. Given that all parties in the House back the millennium development goals of tackling extreme poverty and hunger, delivering universal primary education, promoting sexual equality, reducing child death rates, improving mothers' health, combating AIDS, malaria and other diseases, protecting the environment and developing a global partnership for development mainly by 2015, but also given the fact that the World Bank's recent report shows that in sub-Saharan Africa in particular progress is woefully slow, will the right hon. Gentleman tell the House whether he agrees that on current trends the extreme poverty reduction target will not be met for 147 years, the target on child poverty will not be met for 162 years, and others may not be reached for 186 years, as the Chancellor told the Select Committee on International Development only last Thursday?
Hilary Benn: I welcome the hon. Gentleman to his new post. It will be a pleasure to work with him and occasionally disagree with him at the Dispatch Box. I am glad that in his very first question he demonstrated his encyclopaedic memory and knowledge of the subject. He is right to identify the fact that, on current trends, we are not making sufficient progress to meet the millennium development goals, which is why our contributions are, first, the rising UK aid budget—I hope that that is something that he will support—and secondly, the international finance facility, which I referred to a moment ago and is the best option on the table for getting additional finance to meet the objectives that he has just identified.
Mr. Bercow: I accept some of what the right hon. Gentleman said, but I am afraid that in total it was not good enough. Given that middle-income countries are still home to at least 140 million people living in poverty, that the Prime Minister promised on 25 April that help for such people would continue as planned, and that the statement to the House on 14 October made no mention
of impending cuts, how does the Secretary of State justify the savage £100 million cut in funding involving the complete withdrawal of programmes from Anguilla, Croatia, Egypt, Honduras, Macedonia, Peru, Romania, and the Turks and Caicos islands, and cuts affecting at least a dozen other countries? Is it not a standing disgrace—
Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman must trim his questions in future.
Hilary Benn: I shall try to trim my answer, Mr. Speaker.
Our decisions have not affected funding for humanitarian work and we were already planning to withdraw from a number of the programmes to which we referred long before Iraq because, as I explained to the Chairman of the International Development Committee, we made a commitment to increase the support that we give to the poorest countries in the world. It would be interesting to hear from him in his new capacity in due course whether or not he supports the Government's commitment that by 2005–06, 90 per cent. of our growing aid budget will be spent on the poorest countries. I think that that is the right policy—does he?
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