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Mr. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cotswold) (Con):
My right hon. Friend mentioned the European Union’s Everything but Arms treaty. He will be aware that the European Union has gone to considerable trouble to negotiate economic partnership agreements with various African groups. The quid pro quo from the European Union in opening up those markets will be aid in return for the damage that will be suffered, much of which could go towards the infrastructure that he mentioned.
Does he not agree that such agreements must not be pushed too quickly, so that those countries can adapt to the changes that they are being asked to make?
Mr. Lilley: Had the proposals that we have been advocating been introduced, it would not be necessary to move away from the Cotonou agreement, which was unconditional, but which was also ruled to be inappropriate by the World Trade Organisation because it was with a selected bunch of friendly countries, rather than with an objective category of countries. Under WTO rules, it is possible to offer preferences only if they are offered to an objective category of countries. If the EU and others agree to offer preferences to all low-income countries, they will not have to require reciprocity or negotiate economic partnership agreements and they will still be able to do what my hon. Friend suggests with any aid received.
The reason why what we advocate is now possible is that previously the category of low-income countries included India. In real politics, there was no way that we were ever going to persuade Europe, America or Japan unilaterally to open their markets to a category of countries that included India, which, although poor, was seen as a major industrial power and a threat. India has happily moved into the ranks of middle-income countries. It is now conceivable—and I believe realistic—for us to open our markets unconditionally to the remaining poor countries of the world. That is what we advocate and why we advocate it now.
What is more, what we are proposing can be done immediately. It would not require us to wait for the Doha agreement, desirable though that would be. The Doha agreement is fundamentally an agreement between the middle-income countries and the rich countries and has little or nothing to offer the poorest countries. What we are advocating can be introduced immediately by the EU, the USA or others acting alone, without waiting for the slowest ship in the convoy. That is what we should do; it is also what I hope we will do.
If we do that, the potential for Africa will be significant. We should not be too pessimistic about Africa. Different continents may have different colours of skin, but we all have the same number of grey cells and the same desire to improve the lot of our families and ourselves. We all have the same capacity for enterprise. I have no doubt that, given the opportunity and access to markets, the African countries, where I have worked and travelled in my previous careers, will in due course march on the road out of poverty via trade as we advocate.
6.37 pm
Mrs. Claire Curtis-Thomas (Crosby) (Lab): Although it would be good to talk about Africa as a whole, I will limit my remarks to a country that I know well, which is Sierra Leone. I have probably been to Sierra Leone at least 12 times in the past four years and I think that I know it reasonably well. I want to talk about the Government’s performance in relation to Sierra Leone, to share some of my concerns about how development funding is being delivered and to offer some suggestions about how it might be improved.
I would like first to bring the House up to speed on where Sierra Leone is with respect to public service agreement 29, which relates to the eight millennium
development goals. There are insufficient data in Sierra Leone for us to make any judgments about where we stand on the first goal of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger. We have achieved the agreed target on the second millennium development goal, which is to achieve universal primary education, both in terms of primary education and net enrolment in primary education. I will talk about that a little later, because in that case the statistics are extremely deceptive.
The third millennium development goal is to promote gender equality and the empowerment of women. We are seriously off track in that respect, although we look as though we are on track in terms of the ratio of girls to boys in primary education. The fourth millennium development goal is the reduction of child mortality and the under-five mortality rate. We are seriously off track on that and have made no progress. The fifth millennium development goal is to improve maternal health and the maternal mortality ratio. Once again, we are seriously off track. Indeed, Sierra Leone is still at the bottom of the world index of child and maternal mortality.
We have made progress in combating HIV/AIDS, and we have made progress on combating the prevalence of HIV among 15 to 49-year-olds—half the population of Sierra Leone is in that age range—but we will still not achieve that sixth millennium development goal. Finally, we have not delivered the seventh goal of ensuring environmental stability, and we will not do so. We have also failed to increase the proportion of the population with sustainable access to an improved source of water.
I shall provide further illustration of my narrative by giving the House some statistics. The amount of expenditure that has been given to Sierra Leone has now risen to £50 million. To put that into context, we are the biggest aid donors in Sierra Leone. It has a population of 6 million people, and we give it £50 million. Its gross domestic product is $347 million, which probably equates to about £280 million. Of the £50 million, the amount that we have given to the Sierra Leone Government in hard cash is about £13.2 million. The remaining £37 million is made up of technical assistance, humanitarian assistance, debt relief and other DFID bilateral aid from other official UK sources.
This brings me to the imputed share of the UK’s donation. I have come to know the term “imputed share” very well. It is important to me, and I have asked a series of parliamentary questions to find out what our money has been spent on. I am sure that we would all like to know that. Some of the hon. fellows who have sat on the Front Bench this afternoon—although not the hon. fellow who is there now—have been the recipients of my many written parliamentary questions on this subject. Indeed, I tend to ask rather long, detailed parliamentary questions—
Mrs. Curtis-Thomas:
It is excellent, as the hon. Gentleman says. Unfortunately, the answers to my questions are somewhat more brief than the questions, which is not the desired result. However, there was one deviation from the norm, but it simply allowed me to discover that there were not many answers to be had. It was actually an exercise in obfuscation. I wanted to know how much money was involved, who got it, how and
where they spent it, and how we knew that it had been spent well. Those are the questions that interest me. The answer was, “We would like to tell you, but we give the money to a number of agencies, and they do not collect that data on our behalf.” That is where the marvellous term “imputed share” comes in.
I had some excellent answers that told me that, of the £493 million that the UK Government gave to the International Development Association—that is, the World Bank—the imputed share for education was £27 million. Great! Very good! The African Development Fund got £147 million, of which £12.9 million ended up in education. Some hon. Members will be pleased to hear that we gave the European Commission £1.123 billion, of which the imputed share for education was £9.4 million. Finally, the UK gave the United Nations Children’s Fund £19 million, of which the imputed share that went on education was £0.6 million. So, vast amounts of money are being given, but there is not an awful lot of it that we can track.
That presents me with problems. Among the 6 million people in Sierra Leone—a country pretty indicative of the five poorest countries in the world—illiteracy is a massive problem. I might appear to be going off at a tangent from the main thrust of my presentation today, but I believe that illiteracy and endemic unemployment lie at the heart of our not being able to deliver the millennium development goals.
I want to take a closer look at the primary target on which we have been able to achieve some sort of progress—namely, education. I believe that that millennium development goal was seriously flawed, and that the slavish way in which we have followed it has led to a diminution of possibilities for people in Africa. I shall explain why. We have said that we want to see more children going to primary school, but the statistics that I have just given the House show that we are not putting a huge amount into education. Nevertheless, the terribly poor countries in Africa feel that it is necessary to respond to that millennium development goal. So how are they achieving it?
Let us have a look at Sierra Leone where there is not sufficient money to build new schools. In some African countries, we have provided money specifically for that purpose, and we have seen the schools being built, but in Sierra Leone there is no money for that. There is no public sector Government budget at all; the Government cannot afford to finance any capital build. The way in which these very poor countries have sought to appease the west’s agenda on education is to put more and more children into already stuffed classrooms. When I visited Sierra Leone two years ago, I typically saw 80 children in a class, and, even though education is notionally free in some countries, the students actually have to pay between £11 and £16 a year for the privilege of going to school. However, only the children with a uniform, shoes, books, bags and pencils can go to school, which creates a barrier that precludes others from going.
More children are going to school now, but the number of children in each class has risen from 80 to 100. Let us consider the quality of education that they are getting. The millennium development goal is about getting more children into school, but 70 per cent. of the teachers in Sierra Leone are unqualified. They can read, but they take their teaching test using a standard book. Only 30 per cent. of the teachers are qualified,
and, at the same time, we have seen an expansion of the number of children per class. Are those classes producing better qualified pupils? I suggest not, and the statistics say not. Only 7 per cent. of children in Sierra Leone passed their GCSE in English last year, but they need to be able to read if they are to go on into further education. That is what the country needs, but it lost that capability during the war. During that terrible strife, the nation lost the technical capacity to deliver, but if its children cannot read, it will not be able to regain that capacity. The 70 per cent. of teachers who are untrained are now being trained, but they are expected to deliver more education to bigger classes.
As a consequence, a big private sector in education is emerging. In Sierra Leone, where many people earn less than a dollar a day, the people who earn a dollar are much richer than those earning half a dollar. They see their children going off to school and they wonder what kind of education they are receiving. They say to themselves, “For a few extra leones a week, I could get access to a private school.” In countries where we are not investing a substantial amount of money in teacher education—alongside the development of physical capacity in the shape of buildings and more qualified teachers—the education millennium development goal is generating a second, private sector market. What does that mean for the children left in the other schools? They will get a poorer education.
We in this place might feel great because more children are going to school, but that is not an end in itself. More correctly, we should be looking for quality education. If that meant that only 60 per cent. of the children in Sierra Leone went to school, but that they got a better education, I would be up for that. We have to consider what happens to those children afterwards.
I have talked today about a lot of money being invested in Sierra Leone, but what do we get for our buck? What do the people of Sierra Leone get for that money? We get an awful lot of consultants and aid agencies that make a lot of money, but we do not require any of the agencies acting on our behalf to train any organisations. Let us think about some of the major infrastructure projects in Sierra Leone. The EU has provided a significant amount of funding to build a new road, but there is no competent highway engineering group there because there is no public money to build highways.
The right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) talked about the need for trade, but sustainable transport is necessary for that to happen. It is all very well talking about that, but there needs to be an indigenous engineering capacity to provide such transport. I looked at the EU contract and saw that it was left to a European company to deliver the project, which is rather like what happens with some Chinese investments. At no point was there a requirement for that organisation to train anybody in Sierra Leone. It came to the country, learned from doing the job, got the money paid by the EU, but what was the benefit of that contract to the nation?
If public sector money is being invested, I expect my money to pay for training in the relevant country. My colleagues know that I am an engineer and when I went to the universities in Sierra Leone, I talked to the engineers and asked them what work-based experience they had gained as a result of the investment in the country. The answer was none. We, this Government,
have built police stations and new courts in Sierra Leone, but only two companies in Sierra Leone—I know this, as I have technically audited all of them—are fit to build anything to the standard of international regulations. If those building structures were done well, it would reassure investors that the country has the capacity to build well, because what investor will invest in the country if they cannot see good build?
My questions to the construction companies are these: what training have they provided for local people and what hook-ups do they have with colleges of further education or higher education? Often, there are no such links. We are waking up, are we not, to the fact that the public sector in this country receives a huge amount of money, and we are now requiring it to look towards supporting apprenticeships—which is absolutely right and proper—and other forms of training. One sort of investment is therefore used to deliver another investment.
Too many apprenticeships in this country are not completed, simply because there is no work-based experience. In countries like Sierra Leone, it is absolutely imperative to drive job creation and technical capacity so that we do not go on creating activities artificially. We should say, “We are doing a job; you require that job, but we will offer training and link up with your FE and HE”. When we pull out of such countries—and we want to pull out—we should not leave them with a given road, but no local highway engineers to maintain the facility. For me, those days have gone. We have got to achieve much more with our money.
If we are going to build new schools and a new contract is drawn up to do so, it should say how many young people are going to be taken on from FE colleges. When we go to the Government departments in countries such as Sierra Leone, as I have, we find very clever Ministers leading—they are first-class people—but when we ask who will deliver the plans, we see where the problem lies, because there is insufficient technical capacity in the country. That is lacking because those countries have not had the opportunity to put into practice what their people have been taught.
Why would anybody go into engineering or health care in those countries? Why should they go to university to study those subjects when they know that there will be no jobs for them? I must tell the Minister that I really want to know how to get much closer to our investments in those countries. I want to know how we can make more from the money spent, make better use of our investment, and how we can deliver better results for the people of those countries. People do not want to have things done to them; they want a stake in their own futures and in the development of their own facilities. I just do not see that happening now, so I would like the Government to think more creatively about how we could achieve that.
6.54 pm
Sir Nicholas Winterton (Macclesfield) (Con):
I am very pleased to follow the hon. Member for Crosby (Mrs. Curtis-Thomas), who has delivered a very powerful message from her professional experience. Interestingly, what she said linked in well with the thoughtful speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and
Harpenden (Mr. Lilley). Although I have been to both South Africa and Namibia in recent months, my comments are going to be focused exclusively on Zimbabwe.
Like very many people in this country, I feel a very strong bond of affection for the country of Zimbabwe and its people, and I have spoken of them in this place for nearly 38 years—from the time I first entered the House. I also speak with some degree of hope that a corner may have been turned. Zimbabwe has been through some very dark days and there is still huge suffering as a result of hunger, cholera and other widespread health emergencies. However, there are encouraging reports that the courageous Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and his highly able finance Minister Tendai Biti are bringing some order and some sense where, for too many years, the country has been at the mercy of a regime bent on plunder and pursuing wantonly destructive policies in the selfish pursuit of power and privilege.
Even Matthew Parris wrote in The Times quite recently that he had
“never quite been able—even at the lowest points of Robert Mugabe’s despotism—to dispel a good feeling about the future. Hopes and anxieties for South Africa, a country whose memories and internal fractures run deep, dark and bitter, may flicker; but Zimbabwe is different.”
Having said that, I do not think that we should overestimate the progress made, although it is perhaps worth highlighting one or two of the interesting experiences of people in Harare.
I am advised that a refuse disposal vehicle was spotted in Harare, with
“Men in orange Harare city council overalls, shovelling into it heaps of fly-blown, stinking, rat-infested refuse that had been accumulating for about five years.”
“dozen men and women in reflective yellow vests with machetes, hacking down the 3m elephant grass on the road verge. And lo, nearby, were four shiny new tractors with mowers, turning a suburban eyesore of rank, mosquito-laden weed into parkland.”
“only rare glimpses of the Harare council maintenance department since 2000...Zimbabwe’s power-sharing marriage”—
which is now, I think, just about six weeks old—
“to everyone’s surprise...has made an electrifying difference. Suddenly, up there and running the Government, alongside the malevolent and apparently indestructible”
Robert Mugabe, is that great man, Papa Morgan—Morgan Tsvangirai, the Prime Minister, and somebody whom I describe as the champion of the people. What was one of his first moves? It was
“simply to dump Robert Mugabe’s joke currency and allow US dollars and other convertible currencies to circulate freely. Immediately it unjammed a multitude of cogs in the nation’s stricken engine. The infusion of just a little real money has enabled the Harare city council to make a modest start on the worst of the decay left by the shameless Mugabe, his ministers and officials.”
As I have said, we do not want to be over-optimistic at this stage, because Mr. Tsvangirai is dealing with a most unpleasant individual in Robert Mugabe, who seems oblivious to the suffering of the people of Zimbabwe who have AIDS and cholera, and are suffering from starvation. It is, in fact, a tapestry of unbelievable suffering. Is it possible that this whole decline is a deliberate programme of extermination? Do we recall
the words of Didymus Mutasa when he was ZANU-PF’s administrative secretary and the party’s senior bureaucrat way back in 2002? He said that he
“would not mind if Zimbabwe lost half of its 12 million people because of the collapse of agricultural production”,
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