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Westminster Hall

Tuesday 5 June 2007

[Mr. David Amess in the Chair]

Water and Sanitation (Developing Countries)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That the sitting be now adjourned.—[Mr. Cawsey.]

9.30 am

Mr. William Cash (Stone) (Con): First, I welcome the Secretary of State for International Development to the debate. I know that he has taken a great interest in these matters over a long period of time.

As I walked through Westminster Hall, I noted the exhibition on slavery. We know the figures involved and the amount of commitment given in the late 18th century and early 19th century to ensuring that people would no longer suffer as a result of that despicable crime. I am also bound to consider the matter before us in the context of the number of people who have died as a result of the lack of provision of water and sanitation. Obviously, we are not talking about deliberately inflicted circumstances, but people are dying unnecessarily on a scale commensurate with many of the other great concerns that we ought to have. I ask the House a simple question: why does a child die from water-related disease every 15 seconds? That situation cannot continue.

Clean water is life; foul water is death. We, as parents and grandparents, ought to consider that in the context of our own kith and kin. How would we feel if our children or grandchildren were dying of such terrible diseases? In the 19th century, Chadwick and Snow both addressed the question in not dissimilar circumstances. In the aftermath of the industrial revolution and in the slums of Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield and so on, there was no proper water provision. In the 1830s, 1840s, 1850s and 1860s, a series of reports was produced, because people realised both how awful the situation was and the fact that it was capable of being remedied. It was not only a moral dilemma and problem, but a practical problem. To begin with, Chadwick did not get the reasons for the problem of bad water right—it was John Snow who did so—but in combination they managed to solve the problem, although it took a long time. We now have the technology and the facility, but do we have the political will?

I am bound to add a personal anecdote. In 1849, my great-great-grandfather, William Cash, died of cholera in the great epidemic. Prince Albert also died of cholera a short time later. The curious thing was that my great-great-grandfather was chairman of the National Temperance Society, so he drank water. Even at this distance in time, one must acknowledge the fact that that was, to say the least, something of an irony, because when he and the other directors of the company that he had founded—the National Provident Institution—were gathered together for lunch, the
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others all drank beer, wine or whatever else was on offer, but he drank water and regrettably died within days.

This important debate is about a present issue. I do not want to overstate comparisons, but I want to contextualise the discussion. We shall have a debate later today on Darfur, and we face the problem of civil wars and conflict in Africa. I have mentioned slavery, both historical and modern, and there is also the problem of AIDS. However, to my mind, it is inconceivable that we cannot give the problem of water and sanitation the attention that it requires. I repeat: a child dies every 15 seconds as a result of water-related disease. I seek an increase in the amount of attention given nationally and internationally to this issue.

I should mention a number of articles. I want to get the problem out in the open because there is a question that we have to address to the media at large. We live in a media age: we know perfectly well that the best way to keep a secret is to make a speech in the House of Commons. A number of people have played an important part in trying to raise the question, but we need a continuation of that process. We need awareness to be built up in the same way as awareness of the other subjects that I mentioned. Larry Elliot and Ashley Seager of The Guardian have written important articles, as have Fiona Harvey of the Financial Times, Paul Vallely of The Independent and Tom Stevenson of The Daily Telegraph. They have taken an interest, but they are isolated examples in the context of a child dying every 15 seconds. We need a continuous commitment.

The Select Committee on International Development recently produced a good report. I pay tribute to Tearfund and WaterAid, to Laura Webster and Jennean Akadiri, both of whom have been enormously helpful to me. I also pay tribute to the 220 MPs who have signed my early-day motion on this issue, and the approximately 300 MPs who signed my motion on the reduction of third world debt.

I am interested in the subject because, leaving aside other matters—sovereignty, Europe and things of that ilk—the practical questions of life and death and of people’s lives are of ever greater importance, because they can be solved by combined action throughout the world and through the national and international agencies. I appeal not only to the newspapers, but to The Economist, the Economist Intelligence Unit, the New Statesman, and The Spectator. I ask them to give this subject space, to give it attention and the coverage that it deserves.

Recently the British Medical Journal, for the first time in 150 years, did a report on which issues the public throughout the world regarded as the most significant and the most important. It discussed which medical and related solutions had led to the biggest change in the world, and some 15 milestones were chosen. Interestingly, sanitation came above antibiotics, by a clear head. When people focus on sanitation and water, they realise that it is the issue that spreads its tributaries throughout all public health problems and throughout the entire global landscape, in a way that deserves the sort of attention that I hope it will receive.

One billion people globally lack access to safe water, and 2.6 billion people lack access to sanitation. As I have said, a child dies every 15 seconds from diarrhoea, and 443 million school days are lost globally each year
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to the illness. Half the world’s hospital beds are taken up with people suffering from water-borne diseases, 40 billion working hours are lost each year in Africa to the need to carry water, and 11 per cent. more children attend school when sanitation is available. Improvements to water and sanitation are crucial if development interventions are to be effective. New hospitals will remain full and new schools could remain empty unless water and sanitation are included in the bundle of essential services that are given priority nationally. Water and sanitation are also important to improving the lives and status of women. However, globally, aid to the sector has fallen and less aid has been focused on the countries that need it the most. Although spending on health and education has doubled since 1990, the share of global aid spent on water and sanitation is contracting. The problem is compounded by the fact that renewable freshwater supplies are running low due to a sixfold growth in consumption in the 20th century, and that issue is likely to be exacerbated by climate change.

Ann McKechin (Glasgow, North) (Lab): I very much welcome this debate. As a member of the International Development Committee, I have visited a number of pit latrines this year as part of our investigation and report. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the lack of funding for sanitation, which is much more severe than the lack of funding for water, is a very serious problem? People fail to address the issue, sometimes simply out of embarrassment, but it is vital to do so if we are to save the many lives that he has spoken about this morning.

Mr. Cash: I am grateful to the hon. Lady. She has taken a great interest in this subject and was a contributor to the Committee’s report. I agree with her 100 per cent. My constituency abuts Stoke-on-Trent, where sanitary ware has traditionally been produced in this country, and I shall be in touch with people there to try to promote their interest in the subject for the very reason that she has mentioned.

Some people might think that provision of latrines, lavatories, toilets, sewerage and so on is a difficult subject, but I disagree. It is so vital and the pit latrines that the hon. Lady mentioned are so fundamental that we must take it seriously. Piped water, for example, can be provided, but what is the point of piped water if it becomes contaminated by sewage? It is essential that we tackle those issues, and I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her intervention.

It is estimated that the target for water and sanitation in the millennium development goals will be met in all regions only if donors and developing country Governments double their spending from $14 billion to $30 billion per year immediately, with priority given to Africa and south Asia and to the issue of sanitation. I pay tribute to the Secretary of State for his work, and I hope that he will take my criticisms, such as they are, in good heart. With a change of Prime Minister, who knows what might happen to the right hon. Gentleman? However, the plain fact is that his voice in such matters will continue to reverberate, and I sincerely trust that the new Prime Minister, when he
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takes over, will give water and sanitation the sort of priority that he has given to education in Africa.

I turn to the Government’s record on the issue. United Kingdom aid to the water and sanitation sector fell steadily between 2000 and 2004, but the Secretary of State has made a number of positive recent announcements. In March 2004, the Department for International Development produced a water action plan and in 2005 the Secretary of State announced a doubling of aid for water and sanitation for Africa by 2007-08 from £47.5 million to £95 million. In the context of what I have said, I am bound to ask whether that is enough—even though it is considerable.

DFID’s 2006 White Paper included water and sanitation as one of the four key basic services—the others are health, education and social protection—on which it will spend 50 per cent. of its aid. The White Paper also announced a “doubling of the doubling” to Africa, with aid increasing to £200 million per year by 2010-11, as the Secretary of State said in reply to my question in the House the other day. DFID is drafting a new policy paper on water and sanitation, and it published a document earlier this year called, “Why we need a global action plan on water and sanitation”. I am not going to say that those are just fine words; they are important, but the Department must do better.

The Secretary of State has demonstrated considerable commitment to the issues, but with the Chancellor championing education and the Prime Minister closely linked to commitments on HIV/AIDS, it could be argued that water and sanitation have not received the same high-level political commitment from the UK at international summits. The Committee’s report also accused DFID of having a blind spot when it comes to sanitation, as the hon. Member for Glasgow, North (Ann McKechin) said.

Aid from other European Union member states has also declined. The EU water initiative, launched in 2002, aimed to increase high-level support for those issues and to improve mechanisms for co-ordination between donors nationally. However, despite DFID attempts to improve the initiative, there remains a general lack of commitment from most member states, and we believe that the initiative has largely failed to achieve its objectives.

Other major donors to the sector include the United States and the World Bank. The amount of money that the World Bank provides for water and sanitation is great, but it, too, must do better. Major donors have tended not to focus on the poorest people in the poorest countries; instead, they have spent more on a small number of major infrastructure projects in middle-income countries.

When one looks at who suffers the most in Africa, and in sub-Saharan Africa in particular, it is important to note that the poorest people in the poorest slums pay the most for water. There are rackets in certain countries. In Kenya, for example, there are disparities in the amount of money that the water carriers and suppliers seek, and the net result is that poor people pay disproportionately more for water. That is inconceivable when one considers the impact that it is bound to have on poor people and their children. No wonder, one child dies every 15 seconds.

The G8, which is about to reconvene, last discussed water and sanitation in 2003, when it signed up to the
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Evian action plan on water and sanitation. The plan, however, was more a broad statement of intent than a concerted strategy for meeting the MDG targets. With two days to go before the G8 meeting and with one child dying every 15 seconds, I believe that now is the time to revisit the issue of water and sanitation and for the G8 to commit itself to a comprehensive plan of action.

Will the Secretary of State speak to the Prime Minister? Will he push for a global action plan on water and sanitation at the G8 summit, the day after tomorrow? That is a specific request—in fact, I would call it a demand. I do not want to overstate the case, but I want to ask: will the Secretary of State please speak to the Prime Minister and raise the issue as a top priority in the G8? That is needed as a first step to providing high-level political commitment to action. The Prime Minister has just made a speech in Berlin about commitments made at the previous G8 meetings being not fulfilled by other countries. Now we have an opportunity to raise the issue in the context of a child dying every 15 seconds as a result of water and sanitation problems. Certainly DFID has acknowledged the need for a plan at that level, but we need more commitment immediately.

Given the fact that 220 MPs have signed my early-day motion and that five chairmen of all-party groups on African matters were among the first six signatories, the fact that we went to Downing street with WaterAid and Tearfund only three weeks ago and presented a petition—I have a reply from the Prime Minister acknowledging that—and the fact that we are setting up a new all-party committee on water and sanitation to look more deeply into these questions, I again urge the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister to respond. I am writing to the Prime Minister today to urge him to bring the issue up at the G8. I look forward to hearing him report back to Parliament on the issue, presumably on Monday. I do not think that what I have proposed is a challenge or an unreasonable request. In the context of what I have said, it is essential.

Finally, we must ensure that sanitation is fully integrated into all health, education and other development initiatives. I say this to my hon. Friend the Member for Boston and Skegness (Mark Simmonds), who is my party’s Front-Bench spokesman. We are giving a great deal of attention to the subject, as I have no doubt he will demonstrate when he speaks. No schools or health facilities should be built without latrines. Indeed, I understand that the new health care strategy is to be launched today in relation to this matter. We must fulfil our commitments on spending in the sector and work hard to ensure that other countries make it a priority. That includes countries within the EU, although I am always concerned about whether it will manage to achieve its targets. We must ensure that efforts are made to integrate the water sector fully into climate change plans, too.

I end by simply saying this. If I have demonstrated a passionate concern about the issue, it is because I believe that it matters. It matters because, as I said at the beginning of my speech, clean water is life; foul water is death. We can no longer allow a child to die every 15 seconds as a result of a failure on water and sanitation.


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9.53 am

Mr. Tom Clarke (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab): It is an enormous pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash). I congratulate him on achieving a debate on a such an important subject, and on the eve of the G8 summit, too, as he said. He has shown a great interest in the subject and has pursued it with the diligence that we have come to expect from him.

I am also particularly grateful for the excellent support that the hon. Gentleman gave to the International Development (Reporting and Transparency) Act 2006, which I sponsored last year. Now that a first-class report has been presented to Parliament—the first of its kind arising from that Act—I am sure that, when we have a debate in the House, he will continue to pursue the subjects dear to his heart and to present his case in the well-informed and comprehensive way that he has done this morning.

I am pleased, too, that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is present. I am sure that he will confirm that the issue is very much at the heart not only of the Government’s approach, but of their endorsement—also now included in the 2006 Act—of the millennium development goals. At least one of those goals—perhaps more—impacts on the issue of water and sanitation, and of course we all want that pursued. The intention in millennium development goal 7 is to halve the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation by the target time of 2015. I know that the Government accept that objective; indeed, from everything that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has said, it is fair to say that he would feel that we can do even better than that. Nevertheless, there is a commitment to the millennium development goals.

The hon. Member for Stone acknowledged that, as reflected in DFID’s recent White Paper, the UK is striving to ensure that our commitments on basic services and on doubling the water spend in Africa by 2007-08 are achieved, and that the spend is then doubled again, to £200 million by 2010-11. We all accept, however, that our current trends suggest that we will simply not meet the target in sub-Saharan Africa. That applies to other aspects of what we hope to do, but it does not mean for one second that we withdraw from what we want to achieve. Nigeria has the largest slum populations in Africa and less than half the rural population there has access to an improved water source. Together with UNICEF, DFID is helping 500,000 people get access to water in eight states and piloting innovative low-cost sanitation initiatives.

I was pleased that the hon. Gentleman mentioned the important debate that is to take place in the House this afternoon on Darfur. It is important that we acknowledge that DFID has provided £17 million specifically for the water sector, through its humanitarian assistance programme in Darfur and southern Sudan. However, the great frustration that we all share is that because of the conflict and the carnage there, even that funding will not be as effective as we would all wish it to be. Nevertheless, DFID should be congratulated on its contribution.

DFID has done well to encourage the international focus on the issue, particularly with its recent
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document, entitled “Why we need a global action plan on water and sanitation”. I have no doubt that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will wish to develop the commitments in that document in his response. It highlighted the role to be played by Governments and civil society in the co-ordination and management of projects, as well as the need for better financing and capability building at local and regional levels. Again, our Government have a record of which I am proud. DFID recently launched a five-year, £3 million research programme on water supply and sanitation in three regions of Ethiopia, helping to show how better financing can strengthen human security and provide opportunities for growth, for the benefit of poor people in Ethiopia and the wider Nile region.

Of course, as the hon. Member for Stone said, not only Africa suffers from the problems that he identified. In Pakistan, half the girls who drop out of school do so because of a lack of access to latrines. That underlines the point that the problem of water and sanitation links in to the other problems that we want to deal with, such as health care, infant mortality, maternal mortality and education. I think that DFID would highlight the importance of its funded programme in the North-West Frontier province in Pakistan, which in 2006-07 provided clean drinking water for 170,000 people and proper sanitation for 225,000 people.

Recently, that excellent organisation Results UK, which is doing wonderful work in this field and particularly on tuberculosis, encouraged a number of us, including my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough, South and East Cleveland (Dr. Kumar), to visit India. Although we were focusing on tuberculosis, it was obvious to us that the issue raised by the hon. Member for Stone—water and sanitation—was pivotal in trying to find a solution to that problem and to many others. The fact is that 1,000 people die of tuberculosis in India every day. Even if we improve water and sanitation as we want to, we will not solve the problem exclusively through that. Nevertheless, that contribution is significant.

At any one time, half the people in the developing world suffer from one or more of the diseases associated with inadequate water supply provision. Half the world’s hospital beds are occupied by people suffering from water-related diseases. That was unsurprising in India, because as we heard, just 15 per cent. of the rural population have access to a toilet. The UK Government promote water sustainability in West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, and that is welcome. It was certainly welcome to the people to whom we spoke, as my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough, South and East Cleveland will recall.


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