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Baroness Rawlings moved Amendment No. 23:
- Page 3, line 16, at end insert "subject to subsection (5)"
The noble Baroness said: I shall speak to Amendments Nos. 23, 24 and 26 on behalf of my noble friend Lady Young.
For the first time, there are signs that HIV incidence--the annual number of new infections--may have stabilised in sub-Saharan Africa. The UN AIDS Epidemic Update: December 2000 said:
- "New infections in 2000 totalled an estimated 3.8 million, as opposed to 4.0 million in 1999".
In 1999, the United Nations Population Division report The World at 6 Billion estimated that world population would cross the 6 billion threshold on 12th October 1999. It is then projected to cross the 7 billion mark in 2013, the 8 billion mark in 2028 and the 9 billion mark in 2054. World population should nearly stabilise at just above 10 billion after 2200.
- "The highest rate of world population growth (2.04 per cent) occurred in the late 1960s. The current rate (1995-2000) is 1.31 per cent".
- "Eighty per cent of the world currently reside in less developed regions. At the beginning of the century, 70 per cent did so. By 2050, the share of the world population living in the currently less developed regions will have risen to 90 per cent".
Last year, the Government spent £162,610,000 on health and population programmes. Last year, DfID gave £15 million to the UN Population Fund. DfID also supports a number of UK NGOs to deliver reproductive health programmes. In 1999-2000, the largest NGO recipients were the International Planned Parenthood Federation, with £5.85 million, and Marie Stopes International, with £4.95 million.
We want women in developing countries to have the best possible access to birth control and family planning. We also believe that all people should be free to decide the size of their own family. However, we will not support any policies or agencies that practise coercive abortion. I beg to move.
Lord Alton of Liverpool: I signed Amendments Nos. 23 and 24, together with the noble Baroness, Lady Rawlings, the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, who apologises to the House, as she is on parliamentary business in Indonesia at the moment, and the noble Baroness, Lady Young, who is absent on parliamentary business elsewhere.
It might be convenient to speak to Amendment No. 26A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Brennan, at the same time. I strongly support the intentions behind it. The amendment would go a long way to deal with some of the questions raised in Amendments Nos. 23 and 24.
This is a timely and topical debate, not least because of the decision in the past few days to award the Olympic Games to China, where coercive population control is regularly practised. Some Members of your Lordships' House may have read an article in today's Daily Telegraph by Sion Simon, who is the Labour Member of Parliament for Birmingham Erdington. He said:
- "The totalitarian brutality of the Chinese government is not in dispute. By the regime's own admission, it has executed more than 1,700 people in little more than the past two months. The most common crimes among the dead were forms of disobedience which in the rest of the world would be called expression".
The decision on the venue for the Olympic Games has met huge criticism throughout the country. As an example of that, I cite yesterday's Independent on Sunday:
- "Optimists suggest that the Olympic spirit will ensure that China cleans up its human rights act in time for the Games".
- "Think again. No, we can expect the Beijing Games to model themselves on Berlin in 1936--with dissenters brutally swept aside in a grotesque attempt to showcase a totalitarian regime ... Don't be taken in".
The reason for drawing a parallel with that decision is that over the past 20 years successive governments have argued that we should do business with China in the whole area of reproductive rights and that, sooner or later, we shall be effective in preventing the coercive population policies pursued there. I do not mention this issue simply because of a distaste for abuses of human rights in China; I have taken a long and sustained interest in this matter since the Chinese Government introduced the policy in 1980.
Indeed, looking back to my time in another place, together with the Member of Parliament for Congleton, Mrs Ann Winterton, in 1995 I initiated a debate there following the broadcast of a programme entitled "The Dying Rooms" by Channel 4. Brian Woods, the director of the programme, wrote about his harrowing visit to a number of orphanages in China at that time. He said:
- "Every single baby in this orphanage was a girl ... the only boys were mentally or physically disabled. 95 per cent of the babies we saw were able-bodied girls".
- "The most shocking orphanage we visited lay, ironically, just twenty minutes from one of the five star international hotels that herald China's emergence from economic isolation".
That programme followed another broadcast by BBC2 called "Women of the Yellow Earth". Both programmes highlighted how forced abortion, forced sterilisation and the forcible fitting of IUCDs for women had been commonplace in China since the one-child policy was introduced in 1980. The simple test that I suggested in the debate in another place in 1995
was whether or not we would permit such procedures to take place here. If not, I asked, what in the world were we doing funding them in China?At that time, I took those arguments to the then Minister responsible for overseas development, the noble Baroness, Lady Chalker of Wallasey. I had two meetings with her. I saw the present Secretary of State, Clare Short, for whom I have considerable respect, not long after she came to office. To use a phrase that probably explains that we both held trenchant views on either side of the argument, we held a very frank discussion.
The noble Baroness, Lady Chalker, and Clare Short have argued consistently in the same context as the arguments put forward for the Olympic Games being held in Beijing--that is, if we were inside we might be able to affect the population policies being pursued by the Chinese Population Association. Successive governments have also argued that we do not fund the Chinese Population Association directly. However, no one has disputed that the funds that we do provide to the United Nations Population Fund--the UNFPA--and to the International Planned Parenthood Federation--IPPF--go into the CPA and, thence, into the one-child policy. Ministers have always accepted that, and I shall allude to it again during the course of my remarks.
During the past 15 years or so both in another place and here I have regularly tabled Questions to Ministers on these subjects. The noble Baroness, Lady Amos, replied to a Question which I tabled in March this year when I raised with her the matter of a report which appeared in the Sunday Times. I shall return to that report in a moment. In reply, she said:
- "The incident in Hubei Province is deplorable, and the Government remain concerned about reports of reproductive abuses and other human rights abuses in China. But we also believe that programmes of the kind supported by UNFPA can contribute to improving policy and practice, and to helping to bring about a climate where coercion and abuse will no longer be tolerated".--[Official Report, 6/3/01; cols. WA24-25.]
Therefore, the argument remains the same: if we stay within, somehow we shall be able to influence events. The purpose of this amendment is to say that surely the point has now been reached where we can see that that policy has not succeeded and that, therefore, the moment has now come to change the policy.
The report in the Sunday Times to which I referred was based on evidence produced by Amnesty International. Michael Sheridan said:
- "A retired doctor had rescued the newborn child from the cesspit of a men's lavatory, where he had been tossed to die. Liu Juyu took the baby to a clinic, where she was confronted by five birth control officials. Amnesty says they snatched the baby, threw him to the ground, kicked him and took him away to be drowned in a paddy field.
- The child had been born in breach of local quotas enforced by the officials, who feared higher-level punishment if their targets were not met".
- "mass demonstrations ... held in Changsha, Hunan province, after cadres tortured to death a man who would not reveal the whereabouts of his wife, who was believed to be pregnant".
Those are not lurid reports dreamed up by journalists. Amnesty International's citing of that case highlighted the growing resistance in China to such brutal methods. Perhaps later in the week--I have tabled an Unstarred Question on these matters for Wednesday--I shall have the opportunity to return in further detail to what Amnesty said.
There has been a change of mood in relation to these issues. Considerable change has occurred in the United States, for example, following hearings in Congress held on 10th June 1998 to which I shall refer again in a moment. The very first act of the incoming Bush Administration was to stop the funding of such programmes.
Change has also taken place here. When Mr Gary Streeter was appointed as the spokesman on overseas aid for the Opposition, I went to see him and we had an extremely useful discussion. He promised me that he would take the issue most seriously. As a consequence, I was delighted to read in the Conservative Party manifesto at the general election an undertaking that these policies would be reassessed. Therefore, I was even more pleased when the noble Baroness, Lady Rawlings, moved this amendment today and provided us with the opportunity to discuss--not in an adversarial, partisan way--the issue further as the summer proceeds between now and Report stage on 16th October.
Instinctively, I would wish to divide the House on the matter, but not today. I want people to have the chance to consider the issue and to see whether we can make a common purpose and recognise that all the evidence that is emerging shows that the previous policy of hoping for the best is simply not working.
When Congressman Chris Smith spoke to the congressional hearing, he cited the example of the Nuremberg trials. He said then that forced abortion was rightly denounced as a crime against humanity by the Nuremberg tribunal. He said that the United Nations should be organising an international tribunal to investigate and prosecute the perpetrators of the Chinese population control programme. Indeed, he added, it continues to fund and congratulate them.
In evidence to that Select Committee, an extraordinary account was given by Gao Xiao Duan, who was herself a birth control official in China. She had managed to flee from China and gave evidence directly to Congress. She said:
- "Should a woman be found pregnant without a certificate, abortion surgery is performed immediately, regardless of how many months she is pregnant".
- "Following are a few practices carried out in the wake of 'planned-birth supervision'
- I. House dismantling ... this practice not only exists in our province, but in rural areas in other provinces as well".
- "The proportion of women sterilized after giving birth is extraordinarily high".
- "During my 14-year tenure ... I witnessed how many brothers and sisters were persecuted by the Chinese communist government for violating its 'planned-birth policy.' Many of them were crippled for life, and many of them were victims of mental disorders resulting from their abortions. Many families were ruined or destroyed. My conscience was always gnawing at my heart ... Once I found a woman who was nine months pregnant, but did not have a birth-allowed certificate. According to the policy, she was forced to undergo an abortion surgery. In the operation room, I saw how the aborted child's lips were suckling, how its limbs were stretching. A physician injected poison into its skull, and the child died, and it was thrown into the trashcan. To help a tyrant do evils was not what I wanted. I could not bear seeing all those mothers grief-stricken by induced delivery and sterilization. I could not live with this on my conscience. I, too, after all, am a mother".
Harry Wu, the human rights activist who was imprisoned in China for many years, also gave evidence. There is not time this evening to go into great detail, but I am sure that Members of the Committee would wish to hear one or two of his statements. He said:
- "In Communist China, grassroots PBP cadres"--
- "are stationed in every village. Those communist party and government cadres are the most immediate tools for dominating the people ... They must watch every woman in the village, their duty being to promptly force women violators to undergo sterilization and abortion surgeries ... PBP is targeted against every woman, every family".
The evidence continues to amass. The Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture made available to me documents from the research directorate of the immigration and refugee board in Ottawa, Canada. In its evidence, it said:
- "Beyond sheer population growth, the Chinese government has acknowledged that it is facing two difficult demographic issues--an ageing population and a growing gender imbalance ... both of which are in part related to its population policies of the past decades".
- "It has become a huge and lucrative business in China. In the five years up to 1996, 88,000 women who had been kidnapped were released by the police--and 143,000 kidnappers caught and prosecuted".
- "The kidnap trade has grown up for one simple reason: the massive imbalance of the sexes in the Chinese population. According to the Chinese Academy for Social Sciences, there are now 120 males for every 100 females in China.
- The shortage of women is a result of Communist China's one-baby rule--and the deep-grained peasant desire for that one baby to be a boy. Approximately nine out of every 10 of the millions of abortions performed in China each year are, experts say, aimed at getting rid of a female foetus".
Those are some of the consequences of the approach. Another consequence is called the "little emperor" syndrome. Inevitably, if a baby is a single
child, he or she is often doted on in such a way that he or she becomes spoilt and grows to be socially immature and unable to relate properly to other children.The report that the medical foundation made available to me suggests that the policy simply does not work anyway. It states:
- "Some sources question the efficacy of the country's population policy, pointing out that the country's fertility rate dropped significantly in the 1970s, but that there has been no subsequent marked decline after the policy's implementation".
I realise that time is short and I do not intend to detain the Committee for much longer. However, this is a rare opportunity to debate a crucially important question. This country provides vast sums that go towards the policy. The UK Government gave the equivalent of £15 million to UNFPA in 1999 and the equivalent of £5.8 million to IPPS in 1999. In addition, they donated an estimated £39.5 million directly to China through concessionary financing arrangements.
There is much evidence showing the way in which the money has been abused. I could cite Dr John Aird's book, Slaughter of the Innocents, or the evidence of Amnesty International or the medical foundation. A couple of years ago the BBC World Service reported that riots had broken out near the southern city of Gaozhou,
- "after government officials moved in to enforce the country's one child family planning policy".
I have referred to the gender gap and the condition of orphanages. According to the latest available figures, which were compiled in 1994, about 1.7 million children are abandoned each year. The vast majority of those who are eventually admitted to orphanages are female, although some are disabled or in poor health.
China is the only country in the world in which it is illegal to have a brother or a sister. It is extraordinary that millions of pounds--British taxpayers' funds--have been poured into those policies over the years. In this context we also need to consider the distorting effect on the population in that country and the abusive approach used in countries such as Tibet, in which the Tibetan population has been deliberately reduced by coercive population means. We should also consider the abuse of women through forced sterilisation, forced abortions and the forced fitting of IUCDs. Those matters and the massive destruction of life should cause us seriously to reconsider whether we should make our resources available to support such an approach. I therefore with great pleasure support the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Rawlings.
7 p.m.
Lord Freeman: I want to speak briefly to Amendment No. 26, which is grouped with the amendment to which the noble Lord, Lord Alton,
spoke, and which relates to Clause 7. It is a probing amendment. I am grateful to the Minister who at a meeting last week was kind enough to encourage the tabling of such an amendment so that there could be a brief airing of this important subject.The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bath and Wells referred to the substantial efforts that the Church of England has made, is making, and will continue to make in the provision of international aid as an NGO. The noble Lord, Lord Brennan, also referred to the important role of the private sector.
I return to a subject that I raised on Second Reading and I declare an interest, as I did previously, as the chairman of a Christian charity that is active in Africa. My comments relate to the work of the smaller NGOs anywhere in the world and those that have been, and still are, assisted by Her Majesty's Government in the distribution of aid.
My concern is not primarily about the principle that Her Majesty's Government provide aid directly to central governments, especially those in western and central Africa. Under that approach aid is allowed to trickle down through local government and regional officials, with or without the assistance of NGOs, which have now changed from being a conduit of aid to being a contractor. NGOs now work for the governments of those countries in the construction of schools and hospitals and by digging wells. That change may or may not be significant in terms of the amount of money that the Government are now channelling directly through central governments rather than through NGOs, which can be owned locally or internationally. However, some significant implications are involved.
My concern is about the fact that that long-term policy, which may have the admirable aim of seeking to create sustainable aid that is administered by national governments to alleviate poverty, is raising certain conflicts in terms of short-term realities.
There are three immediate consequences of the change in providing aid directly to qualified governments as opposed to, in modest part, through NGOs. First, those organisations now have to put up the costs of bidding for work to be carried out for local governments in the alleviation of poverty and that costs money. They need working capital because they are only paid at the end of a project rather than being able to spend the available money throughout the life of the construction of the hospital, school or well. Thirdly, and finally, those charities--often Christian charities--suddenly find that they need commercial management expertise in calculating the best bid and in calculating and controlling costs.
Adverse consequences arise on the ground in a number of countries with this change, and they are occurring at local and regional level rather than at governmental level. My amendment refers to two. The first is inefficiency in the distribution of aid. Inevitably bureaucracy is created, overhead costs rise and there has been a hiatus in a number of countries in the disbursement of British aid through local and regional officials. I am sure the Minister read the Financial
Times today, which contains a good article written by Mark Turner describing what happened in Kenya in 1999 when its local government admitted that its management of the aid programme left a lot to be desired and we reverted to control, administration and implementation by the NGOs.The second complication is corruption. It occurs because local officials responsible for the disbursement of aid provided by Her Majesty's Government to central government are inevitably taking advantage of the fact that they can charge a fee for the disbursement of that aid. Indeed, in some countries the staff who were involved in the distribution of aid have now turned themselves into contractors and are bidding for work on the construction of certain projects.
I shall be grateful for the Minister's comments. A warning is needed, no more than that, in certain countries that unless inefficiencies and corruption cease, then the Secretary of State should reserve the right to go back to the ancien regime where in some cases aid was disbursed directly through NGOs. I conclude by citing a sentence from the Catholic Institute for International Relations--a letter I received this morning as did many other noble Lords. The letter quite correctly sums up the role of NGOs and development assistance when it says,
- "NGOs are often best equipped to deliver assistance swiftly, cheaply and democratically".
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