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3 Jun 2009 : Column 105WH—continued
“The Department for International Development (DFID) does not have a bilateral programme in Egypt. DFID, however, continues to support poverty reduction efforts in Egypt through contributions to international institutions such as the European Commission (EC). The UK is contributing about €95 million towards the EC’s €558 million 2007 to 2010 programme of assistance to Egypt. DFID has also been in regular contact with the World Food Programme (WFP) and has responded to their recent global appeal for countries most at risk from rising food prices with a £30 million contribution. There was no specific appeal for Egypt, where the WFP operates capacity building programmes and school feeding programmes but has no emergency operations.”—[Official Report, 12 June 2008; Vol. 477, c. 441W.]
Again, the Government are saying, “We are giving a little bit of money to this and a little bit of money to that.” I very much hope that we stop giving a little bit of money to this and that, and start interacting and engaging directly with these countries and try to help them directly.
Finally, let me point out that DFID’s bilateral aid expenditure to north Africa fell from just £3.5 million in 2003-04—I do not know how to describe that figure without being rude: £3.5 million for the whole of north Africa!—to about £500,000 in 2005-06, and then to zero in 2007-08. When spending by other Departments is included, aid to north Africa was £38.1 million in 2003-04, falling to £2.8 million in 2007-08, so the entire contribution of not only DFID but all Departments was a squalid £2.8 million in 2007-08. Those figures are from the Library. That contribution represented 0.2 per cent. of total aid from the UK to Africa as a whole, but there are hundreds of millions of people in that region. That goes back to an earlier point. The Department also estimated the UK share of multilateral expenditure in northern Africa to be around £50 million in 2006-07, and there are no data for 2007-08.
I am delighted to have had this opportunity to get a lot of things off my chest. From what I have seen, the Minister does a very good job, and I very much hope that he will explain to me what his Department is doing on some of the matters I have raised. I hope that he will leave the debate having seen the passion that I have for north Africa, because I passionately feel that helping it will ultimately help our own country. No matter how difficult the economic situation becomes, I hope that the Minister and his Conservative and Liberal Democrat
shadows will not forget north Africa or that we must help countries such as Egypt and Libya to deal with some of the terrible human suffering that they face.
Hugh Bayley (in the Chair): I would like us to commence the winding-up speeches at 3.30 pm. I am happy to call Jeremy Corbyn.
3.10 pm
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington, North) (Lab): I am pleased that we are having this debate and I congratulate the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) on securing it. North Africa is not a part of the world that is often discussed in an holistic way, and it is good that we can do that today.
As with all such debates, the problem is whether the reply should come from DFID or the Foreign Office. The Minister, who is from DFID, will clearly have difficulty responding on foreign policy issues, and I suspect that we will get letters from the relevant Departments after the debate. Inevitably, the issues that we are raising will cut across the work of both Departments.
The hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham made some extremely important points about migrant peoples travelling through north Africa. It is unbelievable that most British newspapers and broadcast media seldom report the daily toll of misery and suffering that is the lot of so many people from sub-Saharan Africa. These people do their best to travel through the Sahara or the countries on each of the coasts to reach north Africa, before trying to get across the Mediterranean to Greece, Italy, Malta, Cyprus, Spain or the Canary Islands. Indeed, there is more publicity when tourists are inconvenienced because poor, benighted people from sinking vessels have been washed up on the beaches of the Canary Islands. Such things are at the sharp end of the gap between the richest and the poorest on our planet, and they are an indictment of us all.
Children in our schools are rightly taught about the heroism of people in the 19th and 20th centuries who managed to travel to different parts of the world to succeed, survive or gain political asylum. I suspect that our grandchildren and their children will read about the heroism of those who managed to escape desperate poverty in central Africa to get to Europe or north America to survive. There is a daily story there, but it is simply not being reported.
I recognise what the hon. Gentleman said about the camps in Libya, Morocco and the fortresses of Ceuta and Melilla—the Spanish enclaves that are designed to keep migrants out. However, the issue goes much deeper. The economic policies that are adopted by, or forced on, very poor countries in central Africa lead to rural depopulation, urban poverty and the loss of public services and education. As a result, the only route out of poverty for many people is to escape somewhere else. Those who do end up working illegally in Europe so that they can send small sums back home, some of which are stolen by moneylenders on the way. These are extremely serious issues, and it would be helpful if the debate highlighted them.
Mr. Drew:
I agree entirely with what my hon. Friend says. The situation is made that much worse by conflict, which often originates with the desire to drive out an
ethnic group that may not fit into a region’s or country’s wider make-up. That is exactly what we had in Darfur.
Jeremy Corbyn: My hon. Friend is absolutely right that there is an enormous ethnic dimension to many of these conflicts. People are driven out of a region because they have a different ethnicity from the majority. Equally, people can be victims of environmental disaster. The galloping expansion of the Sahara desert in all directions means that cropping and herding are simply unsustainable as forms of agriculture, so people have to go somewhere else. When they do, they are not welcome because there is already pressure there on the remaining resources and bits of land, which leads to conflict. There is not one simple explanation behind such events, but a series of complexities. For the good of all of us, we should concentrate far more on such issues and on the needs of those involved, and I am pleased that we are at least having a debate about them today.
As the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham said, I am quite involved in the issue of Western Sahara. Indeed, I am the chair of the all-party group on Western Sahara, and my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) is our secretary—I have just promoted him. The group exists to highlight a fundamental injustice, which reflects not only on our foreign policy, but quite strongly on European policy and trade arrangements. The hon. Gentleman was right that British aid to north Africa is extremely limited. Such aid as is provided is disbursed through the European Union, the UN and non-governmental organisations, with a small amount being disbursed directly.
The issue of Western Sahara and its refugees is the result of politics and political conflict, but the European Union manages quite deftly to operate in two entirely separate and different zones when it comes to Western Sahara and Morocco. There is an EU trading arrangement with Morocco, which includes a human rights clause. A large number of European companies are doing extremely well out of trade with Morocco, and I have no problem with trade with the country—I have no quarrel with Morocco in any way. However, I do have a problem when companies benefit from the resources of Western Sahara or the fish off its coast—that is a different issue altogether.
I do not want to go into the history of Western Sahara—that would take too long, and you have asked for Back-Bench speeches to stop by 3.30 pm, Mr. Bayley—but I do want to make a few brief points in parenthesis. In the 1950s, France ceased to be, in effect, a colonial power in Morocco. In the 1960s and early 1970s, Spain still occupied Western Sahara as a colony. Morocco supported the right of self-determination and, therefore, the option of independence for the Sahrawi people. Indeed, throughout the ’60s and early ’70s, Moroccan Ministers made plenty of speeches supporting the concept at African Union and other events.
The demise of the Franco regime and Spain’s withdrawal from Western Sahara led not to what should have been an orderly process of decolonisation under the auspices of the UN, but to the occupation of Western Sahara by Morocco and Mauritania and to a war. Morocco, which was well equipped with weapons from America and other countries, drove the majority of the Sahrawi people out of Western Sahara and into Algeria.
The camps were established in the 1970s—40 years ago—and people then had to survive in them. Mauritania withdrew from its portion of Western Sahara, which became, in effect, the liberated zone. Ever since, about 150,000 people have been living in refugee camps in Algeria. Algeria has supported them and given them space to survive.
There should have been a UN-sponsored referendum to allow people to return to Western Sahara. There were years and years of argument about how to draw up an electoral roll. Morocco insisted that the people it had moved into Western Sahara as Moroccan settlers could vote in the referendum, which would clearly have negated the votes of the Sahrawi people living in the refugee camps. No referendum has been held.
The nearest that the situation ever came to some kind of development was the Baker plan. The former US Secretary of State James Baker convened a series of meetings and conferences at which he drew up a plan that was effectively a form of limited autonomy for Western Sahara, which would have involved its people going back and, at an indeterminate date—I think 10 years on—a referendum. The Polisario, the political leadership of Western Sahara, reluctantly accepted the plan—I was at the congress, in a big tent in the desert, when they did it—only to have it effectively vetoed by Morocco. We are back to square one and people living in refugee camps.
The UN organisation MINURSO has just had its mandate renewed by Security Council resolution 1871, of 30 April. Also, Christopher Ross, a former US diplomat, is undertaking a new round of negotiations. I hope that the British Government will do all that they can to support and facilitate those negotiations, but above all to recognise that it is not right that, 30 years on, the third generation of those who were driven into the camps are still living there. Imagine what it is like for a young person growing up in a refugee camp in Algeria, knowing that all they can dream about is the possibility of going to Western Sahara at some indeterminate point in the future. I pay tribute to the Polisario leadership for managing to hold the camps together and ensuring that sufficient aid gets through from the UN and other sources at least to feed people and provide medical care. The camps are extremely well run and are good communities, but they are still refugee camps, and are wrong and unnecessary.
I hope that the Minister will at least be able to give me some assurances: first, that our aid to MINURSO and to the camps will continue until it is no longer necessary, because people have a right to return; and that we will re-examine the EU relationship with Morocco. There is a human rights clause in the trade agreements, as there is in all EU trade agreements. Morocco, by its illegal occupation of Western Sahara, is in breach of that clause. It is simple: why are we not doing anything about it? Why, instead, are we offering enhanced associate status to Morocco, instead of telling it, “You must come to an accommodation with your neighbours and stop the illegal occupation”?
It gets worse, however. Western Sahara has phosphate resources and 3.5 million tonnes are turned out a year. Who buys it? Who benefits from it—which companies? Sure as heck, none of that wealth or money is going to the refugees who were driven out of Western Sahara all those years ago. Last year, the EU, to its discredit,
concluded a fish agreement with Morocco, by which the abundant fish stocks in Western Sahara’s Atlantic waters are now being harvested by Spanish and French companies, for the main part. They are making a great deal of money out of it. It is stolen property, as far as I am concerned, and I hope that something can be done about it, and that the Minister can give us good news about that.
At the UN in April, when the issue came up for debate, the southern African countries, and South Africa in particular, sent a very strong memorandum to the Security Council:
“It is of concern to us that for over three decades, the situation in Western Sahara remains unresolved. We would like to reiterate that for us, the Member States of SADC”—
the Southern African Development Community—
“the struggle for the people of Western Sahara is a struggle for self-determination and indeed is based on the principles of decolonisation, promotion of human rights, international legality and the stability and security of the African continent. It is a struggle that people of our sub-region fully associate themselves with.”
It is significant that the only self-determination issue in the whole of Africa that is recognised by the African Union is that of Western Sahara. It is recognised as Africa’s last colony. It is up to us to stop recognising de facto Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara and to start putting political and economic pressure on Morocco to withdraw.
Mr. Drew: The Polisario is clear—it has been announced today—about the fact that it partly blames Morocco for the very sad events concerning Mr. Dyer, because, of course, there is tacit support for the Salafist terrorist group, and it does not take a genius to work it out that one of the sub-Saharan countries is helping it. Polisario’s allegation is that it is Morocco.
Jeremy Corbyn: That is indeed an important and serious allegation. We must be clearer in our relationship with Morocco and stronger in our diplomatic efforts to persuade it that if it wants to be accepted as a normal trading partner, with normal membership, the illegal occupation cannot be allowed to continue. The people of Western Sahara deserve better than that.
Last week I was at a conference in Madrid, organised by the Autonomous university of Madrid, attended by eminent lawyers and professors. We went through the legality of the situation, but also the simple human aspects, such as the march by women of Western Sahara alongside the sand wall, a heavily-mined “defence” facility constructed by Morocco. What is that about, apart from being a terrible waste of resources and an indictment of what illegal occupation and militarism bring us to? Let the people of Western Sahara go back and look after their own land, and live off the abundant resources that lie under it, and the fish in the sea beyond it. Otherwise, it will become the powder keg for yet another war, more killing and more misery.
3.26 pm
John Barrett (Edinburgh, West) (LD):
I want to begin by expressing my condolences to Edwin Dyer’s family, following the announcement during Prime Minister’s Question Time that the Prime Minister had strong
reason to believe that he had been murdered. Having read what has been put on the website of those responsible, I am left in no doubt that that, sadly, is the case. The case of Mr. Dyer—his being kidnapped and held in Mali and Niger, and his being sold on by local tribesmen to Algerian members of al-Qaeda—shows that several countries and terrorist groups in north Africa are at the heart of the problems of the region.
I thank the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) for obtaining the debate, because I served on the Select Committee on International Development, and I cannot remember there being a debate on aid to north Africa during those five or six years—or in my eight years in Parliament. In addition to the value of the hon. Gentleman’s speech and that of the hon. Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn), and the interventions, the debate itself was a good idea. I question some of the issues that the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham raised, but the very fact that that he raised them is good.
There are issues about giving overseas aid to middle-income countries, and there are other problems in considering the question of the poorest people in the world. The poorest people live in Africa, but the majority of poor people live not there, but in other countries, some of which are middle-income countries. There are 150 million people in Uttar Pradesh—one state of India—and 50 million of those live below the poverty line. African countries have much smaller populations, and individual states in India have 10 times their population. Uttar Pradesh has 10 times the population of Mali. There is a problem when DFID must decide where to tackle the requirements of those most in need; some of those who are most in need receive nothing. I think that is part of the point of the debate.
I am aware from previous visits that I have made that branding is an important issue. I was with the Chairman and other members of the Select Committee following the earthquake in Pakistan. New housing had been put up, funded by UK taxpayers but erected by Norwegians, and local people thought it was Norwegian housing. However, I understand that there are risks in attaching the UK flag to projects in some developing countries, because they can become targets for hostile groups. Often, as the hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) mentioned, there are problems with host countries—not least Sudan—and the sending of direct UK aid; the aid must go through agencies. There is a problem in dealing with countries such as Sudan whose Governments are, as the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham said, part of the problem, not the solution.
Daniel Kawczynski: I agree that there are certain cases in which it would be controversial or difficult to shout from the rooftops that aid is from Britain. However, there are countries, such as Kenya, which I visited with the Select Committee, where it would be totally appropriate. The villagers we spoke to in the most northern village in Kenya that we visited said they were rather disappointed that they had not known that that was British aid. They feel a great empathy with Britain and were rather startled by how quiet we were about explaining what we were doing.
John Barrett:
That reflects the view of the many people in Pakistan who asked why the British Government were not doing more, even though there is a huge
Pakistani community in this country. DFID had in fact done much work, but that was not known on the ground.
I am glad that this debate is taking place. Sudan was mentioned earlier and I hope to mention it later because it is a key focus of the region’s problems. As has been mentioned, there is a lack of food and medical supplies there and the camps are becoming permanent because of the problems. DFID has done a lot of work there and ought to have due credit for it, but there is always much more to be done. When arguing for more direct overseas development aid, wherever it goes, we must press for it to be spent effectively. When we hear stories of birthday celebrations that cost more than the aid to the region, we know that there is a real problem. I genuinely have no problem explaining to my constituents, even in the poorest parts of the constituency, why more money should be spent on increasing our aid expenditure, but they want to see it spent effectively.
Daniel Kawczynski: On that point, when I visited Kenya recently with the International Development Committee I read all the national newspapers, and I found that the debate there during that time focused on what types of Russian helicopter and plane should be bought for the Ministers, at a cost of hundreds of millions of pounds. That was in the national papers every day. I was so disappointed that while we are giving them £50 million in aid, they are spending hundreds of millions on luxury helicopters for themselves.
John Barrett: I must not be distracted because there are too many other issues I would like to squeeze in during the remaining time, but I will say that problems have arisen before in Kenya, as they have with the military hardware that India purchases and the air traffic control system in Tanzania.
I would like to focus on the fact, which was mentioned earlier, that UK bilateral aid expenditure to north Africa fell from £3.5 million in 2003-04 to £0.5 million in 2005-06 and then to zero in 2007-08. We cannot, however, ignore the amount of money that we, as major contributors to the European Union, spend that works its way to our near neighbours. That is an important reason why we must be aware of what is happening in countries that are effectively our near neighbours. Many people go from the UK to Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt on holiday, as it is a short flight away, but we also see on television that there are problems there with terrorism and migration, and they are right on our doorstep.
The challenges in north Africa are certainly different from those in sub-Saharan or west Africa, and while the need to reduce poverty in the whole region is perhaps not so pressing because it has oil wealth and other riches, there are nevertheless continuing economic and political problems in north Africa that ought to be of key concern to the UK. Mali, for example, is one of the world’s poorest nations, so it is natural to ask why it receives no aid.
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