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Viscount Falkland: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for giving way. Was an application actually made for an Exchequer grant in the case of the Raphael or the Omai or has the reviewing committee given up?
Baroness Blackstone: My Lords, the reviewing committee does not make applications; it is for the gallery or museum that wishes to purchase a particular object of art to try to raise the money. I do not believe that an application has been made directly to the Treasury. As I said, an application has been made to the Lottery.
Of course, the Acceptance in Lieu Scheme brings pre-eminent objects into public ownership in lieu of inheritance tax. They are therefore saved for the nation before the point of export. Our sponsored galleries have acquired works in this way over the past five years with a tax value of almost £37 million. In the past
year, for example, we announced the acceptance of works by Zoffany, Hogarth and Van Dyck, whose portrait of Sir William Killigrew was allocated to the Tate Gallery, and has been reunited there with the portrait of his wife. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, for the remarks he made about the extra funding that is now available for the scheme.Noble Lords have put forward some interesting ideas about how the tax system could be used further to support acquisitions and I am aware that different schemes are available in various countries overseas. However, in looking at any such proposals, we would need to be very clear that any schemes, for example to offset gifts against tax, could be justified in terms of the revenue forgone by the Exchequer. Moreover, they would need to be certain to bring about the donation of items of quality at reasonable value.
I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Renfrew, mentioned sales of works of art on the part of owners of historic houses to fund repairs. He and other noble Lords will probably be aware that my department has made a proposal to the Treasury as regards a scheme to help owners of historic houses to set the cost of their repairs against tax, provided that their houses are opened to the public.
The noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, mentioned the possibility of altering the rate of the douceur—the "sweetener" available to encourage owners to sell direct to an institution in this country. This is a suggestion that has been made before and in principle some flexibility in the douceur has long been available for private treaty sales but in practice has been very little used. We are, however, certainly ready to think about how it might be used rather more.
Since publication of the recommendations of the Culture Select Committee in July 2000 and the Illicit Trade Advisory Panel in December 2000, there has been progress on measures to combat the looting of archaeological sites and the unlawful trafficking in cultural property. As the noble Lords, Lord Renfrew and Lord Luke, said, we are disappointed that the Private Member's Bill, Dealing in Cultural Objects (Offences) Bill, which was introduced in another place on 7th February, was talked out. That was a useful measure which had all-party support. I certainly confirm the Government's strong support for it. Given their standard-setting role in the market for cultural objects, it is essential that museums should respond appropriately to the problems of the illicit trade. I believe that they are doing so.
The noble Lord, Lord Renfrew, also took up the committee's question about the export of archaeological artefacts from the UK without a licence, and I should be pleased for the advisory panel to examine that further.
I am running out of time but I believe that I have responded to most of the questions raised. I shall write to noble Lords to respond to any questions that I have not addressed. The noble Lord, Lord Brooke, mentioned the reviewing committee's quinquennial review. I expect the report of that review to reach me soon. Although it has taken rather longer than we
originally envisaged, I know that much valuable work has been done in looking at a number of difficult issues, including those concerning valuations and option agreements, which the noble Lord mentioned. I look forward to considering the recommendations.In conclusion, I do not share the pessimism expressed by some noble Lords about the committee's report. The report shows quite clearly that the majority of Waverley items were saved for the nation last year, and found homes in museums and galleries all over the UK. Thanks to our support for free admission, they can now be seen, without charge, by an ever widening group of people. The system is seen as fair by those who use it, and is respected internationally.
I accept that the higher priced items present a big challenge, not least to the Lottery. Difficult decisions have to be made as to whether to fight to raise the money needed to match the high prices that great works of art fetch at auction. Sometimes wealthy institutions abroad will win out. But the system allows our flourishing international art market to operate, at the same time as giving a chance to raise sufficient funds to retain items in this country. We should preserve it and celebrate the many successes which it has made possible.
5.8 p.m.
Lord Strabolgi: My Lords, we have had a very good debate on this important subject. I should like to thank my noble friend the Minister for her very detailed and reasoned reply and also to offer my grateful thanks to all noble Lords who took part in the debate who gave us the benefit of their special knowledge. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.
Southern Africa
5.9 p.m.
The Earl of Sandwich rose to call attention to the international development targets in southern Africa; and to move for Papers.
The noble Earl said: My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who are to take part in the debate. I welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Amos, back to her place. I declare a voluntary interest as a trustee of Christian Aid and a supporter of Save the Children and CARE. I assure the noble Baroness that we are all here not only for the advice we may offer but because we share a continuing concern for Africa, and a concern that Africa deserves special attention and should not be left out of our efforts to meet the international development targets.
I shall start with a word of caution, however. Africa has officially entered a new dimension. It has embarked on a new "economic" partnership known as NePAD, designed to create the most favourable environment for African development. On paper, it has all the hallmarks of the democracy, good governance, civil society, human rights and
transparency that will bring economic confidence and prosperity. It is supposed to encourage African solutions, too. It even has a mechanism for avoiding bureaucracy or a stultifying committee structure. All that is welcome.For all that, NePAD is not yet an equal partnership. Without a much greater degree of participation by local people and non-governmental organisations as well as governments, it will not succeed. It will be a bare framework that looks like a cover for western aspirations, an over-ambitious exercise that could founder on too many promises and resolutions.
The noble Baroness may say that Africa needs time and new enterprise, and that things will change. Who could disagree with that? However, she might also recognise that African leaders may not be prepared to give that time if the demands and conditions of international financial institutions and donors prove too much for them. Zimbabwe is a case in point, although perhaps an extreme one. Aid conditionality is still present in NePAD; it merely has new disguises.
NePAD has to win over corporations as well as governments. The noble Baroness will certainly draw attention to the Africa Economic Summit in June, and the prospect of attracting more private sector business partners and inward investment into Africa. It is a devout wish that all that will happen but, with emergencies, world economic uncertainty and the imminence of war with Iraq, it seems hardly likely that it will.
This coming week, we are again preoccupied with the Middle East, and we forget what serious consequences war in Iraq could have for Africa. The whole east African coast down to Cape Town has traditional economic and cultural links with the Gulf. South Africa has several important trade agreements that could be in jeopardy. In the minds of most European politicians, Africa is expendable when it comes to European and north American strategic interests. That is another example of the West espousing aid and human rights in policy documents and conferences on one hand, while ignoring the real needs of developing countries on the other.
I return to the main question: have our governments set an impossible task in Africa in establishing the millennium development goals? That may be, but the object of the debate is not to knock those goals down. It is to ask what progress governments have made with the overall objective, which is the elimination of poverty, illiteracy and ill-health.
Two years ago, on 26th February, the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, and the International Development Secretary, Clare Short—as we must recognise, they have done an enormous amount to raise in government the issue of poverty—joined 14 NGOs, including Save the Children, Christian Aid and Oxfam, in a Westminster conference that placed child poverty squarely at the front of the Government's agenda. It also reaffirmed the millennium development goals. They are to ensure children's education, health and protection from abuse and the evils of poverty, which we cannot tolerate in any society.
Next week those NGOs meet the Chancellor again to assess the progress made in reaching those targets. I know that the Government are committed to an expanding aid programme in Africa, but they have not yet convinced all the other Development Assistance Committee countries of the need to increase aid dramatically. At Monterrey, there was talk of doubling the annual ODA from 50 billion dollars to 100 billion dollars as a "finance facility" for the international development targets, and the Chancellor repeated that in an article in the Guardian last week. However, it will be a long haul. The EU expects to raise an extra 20 billion dollars a year by 2006, but the US plans to raise only 10 billion dollars. Much of that merely restores aid to its 1990 levels. Again, the key question for Africa is not about how much, but about what conditions will be attached to that facility.
Having seen the current research on the international development targets, although I accept that gains are being made in other continents, I do not believe that we are even going to meet education targets in southern Africa. Without education, I cannot see how Africa will have the necessary training and skills to reach any of the other targets. It would be easy for any government to plead emergencies as southern Africa's main reason for not reaching the targets, but I am sure that the noble Baroness will go beyond that assessment. I will mention those emergencies only briefly, as I am sure that others will do so in more depth.
HIV/AIDS, most of all, has cut a swathe through both human resources and genuine healthcare initiatives. The disease affects 16 million in southern Africa. It saps energy from skilled personnel in every profession and age group as much as from the general population. I know that the DfID is fully engaged in that emergency and have only one question for the noble Baroness today, of which I have given notice. In its 2002 departmental report, the FCO announced a management charter to protect its embassy and other staff affected by HIV/AIDS, especially in Africa. It is often through a generous interpretation of such practice that policy is most understood in the recipient countries, especially where it is a life and death matter.
In my experience with NGOs, however, I have occasionally seen barriers grow up between embassy nationals and local people. I expect that we have all seen examples of that. Will that policy extend to part-time local staff and partner health agencies? Will we show them that it is not only our own staff with whom we are concerned, but those working alongside them?
Another unforeseen emergency is the food crisis affecting 14 million in southern Africa. In some countries, that crisis is being contained through national mechanisms and rapid responses from the World Food Programme. In others, it is taking a daily toll of human life. The country suffering most in the region is Zimbabwe, for reasons of governance as well as natural disaster. I expect that other noble Lords will concentrate on the country. Having worked there briefly in the 1960s, I can only say that a beautiful
country with a highly skilled and educated workforce is being held to ransom by a man who had held out so much promise to ordinary people.If we can look beyond those emergencies, several countries in the region already have a brighter future. The first to mention are those recovering from decades of civil war—Angola and Mozambique. Angola has just signed its peace treaty and was the subject of a recent debate, and I visited Mozambique in December, 10 years after its own civil war ended in 1992.
Mozambique is one of those countries that seems to fulfil almost every criterion in the NePAD checklist, which is why it is a favourite with aid donors. It is post conflict, has stable government, is practising multi-party democracy and is attracting private investment, especially along the corridor to South Africa. It gained much credibility during the recent televised fraud and murder trial. It has a fair degree of civil society participation, and with encouragement from various embassies is making efforts to increase it.
Something has gone wrong, however. Mozambique does not yet show the results that people expect on the poverty scale. It has very poor communications, especially in terms of rural roads, and is still recovering from war and floods. Up to 17 per cent of its children may die of AIDS by 2010. Overall, its health services are overstretched. Its per capita GNP is well below the average. Like much of Africa, it simply needs much more investment in infrastructure, agriculture and services to give its rural population a chance of sustainable development. However, the world is not prepared to give that much support for agriculture. I recognise that the DfID is doing a lot for the port of Maputo and thus ultimately for export figures, but that is not directly assisting the poorest farmers when they have no means of getting their goods to market.
Debt relief of 2 billion dollars under the enhanced HIPC scheme, which amounts to a reduction of 70 per cent, may look generous from outside. Actually, it will leave Mozambique saddled with new debts in a few years' time. Christian Aid is calling for no less than full cancellation of its external bilateral and multilateral debt.
I have consulted the UNDP website and have looked down the checklist of millennium development goals for Mozambique. Out of the 10 targets listed, under the question, "Will the targets be met?", not one of them says, "yes". Five say "potentially", but five—including, critically, food, water, child mortality and even education—say "unlikely".
This is the star pupil, which will miss five critical targets. How are the other countries ever going to reach them at this rate of international commitment? Even the extreme poverty target, which potentially will be met, seems doubtful. It will, of course, require a more equal spread of investment than currently exists. For example, one single project—the 1.3 billion dollar Mozal aluminium smelter, which I visited in November—skews the overall export total. This structural inequality is the most fundamental flaw in the whole concept of averaging through the international development targets.
Mozambique, under its PRSP, or PARPA—the local name for it—has an interim target of reducing poverty by 30 per cent by 2010. But that would imply an annual economic growth rate of 8 per cent, which assumes very favourable conditions. Similarly, its debt sustainability is based on an almost unattainable export growth rate of 16 per cent in 2002–05 and 7 per cent thereafter. I have raised this question previously in the House. Such figures show how the international financial institutions can stretch statistics beyond credibility to show the most optimistic forecasts, leaving the country struggling to meet targets beyond its reach. I hope that the noble Baroness can at least assure me that the DfID will not make aid and debt relief conditional on such forecasts.
I turn now to the subject of South Africa, which is, of course, the country in the region that offers the most promise with a GDP of 150 billion dollars—three times that of all the 13 other members of the Southern Africa Development Community combined. It is a key country in SADC and NePAD and a driving force of development through hosting the World Conference on Sustainability, racism summits and other conferences.
Having witnessed the 1994 elections on behalf of Christian Aid, I am proud of the ANC Government's achievements in certain sectors—notably their macroeconomic reforms through the GEAR strategy. And yet there is no sustained policy of poverty reduction, as there is in Mozambique. Unemployment is high, affecting at least 36 per cent of the economically active, including the informal sector. Although there is universal primary education, child mortality in South Africa is increasing.
As we all know, the AIDS campaign still needs political energy. I notice that Chief Buthelezi is making much political capital out of that at present. Inequality between the races has persisted, with only 26 per cent of blacks and 29 per cent of Asians having proper access to health services, compared with 78 per cent of whites. According to DfID's departmental strategy paper last year, it is,
- "one of the most unequal countries in the world",
Finally, I shall mention briefly trade. By protecting our own food producers, we are forcing Africa to stay poor because it still depends on sending us unprocessed products and unstable commodities, such as coffee and sugar. The necessity of genuine agricultural trade concessions in Europe, which I know the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, will mention, is paramount. Unless we make progress on these vital concessions, we cannot expect to meet the international development targets since our aid efforts, improved as they are, will not be enough. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
5.24 p.m.
Lord Sawyer: My Lords, I thank the noble Earl for
initiating this debate. His excellent speech reflected lifelong knowledge of, expertise in, and commitment to the continent. My contribution will be far less wide-ranging. I want to focus on South Africa and in particular on improving the economic performance of that country through the development of its workforce.The DfID strategy rightly recognises the pivotal role that South Africa plays in the region and, indeed, the continent through both its economic strength and its political leadership. But South Africa still faces huge challenges as it addresses the legacy of apartheid.
The strategy also recognises that a key element in addressing poverty and inequality is the promotion of growth, jobs and equity. Growth in employment is a key to the reduction of poverty and inequality, but growth in employment is linked intrinsically to the level of skills in the workforce. Apartheid's legacy—in particular, the Bantu education programme—is the very low level of skills among much of the population. That hinders both employment growth and the competitiveness of South African companies.
The Department of Labour in Pretoria has developed a comprehensive national skills strategy designed to address the inequalities and lack of skills across the population. The strategy recognises that employers have an important role to play in improving the skills of the workforce. The key to that approach is to help employers to understand the business case for developing the skills of their people. All too often, as has happened in this country, employers have seen training and development as a burden and a cost. They do not see how training and development can raise the effectiveness, and often the loyalty, of the workforce. The lack of investment in skills development holds back the development of people, reinforces the inequalities of apartheid and stifles the economic growth of the country.
However, I am pleased to have the opportunity in this debate to draw noble Lords' attention to an important initiative, led from the United Kingdom, which is already making an important contribution to improving skills and competitiveness in South African enterprise and improving public sector reform.
For the past four years, I have served on the board of Investors in People UK. Many noble Lords will be familiar with that organisation. It has formed an important part of the skills and competitiveness programmes of successive governments in the UK under the sponsorship of the Department for Education and Skills since 1991. More than 30,000 organisations in the UK have benefited from Investors in People. I am delighted that we are now able to share this excellent approach to workforce development and our experience here with our colleagues in the South African Government. That brings benefit to individuals and, crucially, also helps to improve the competitiveness of organisations and, thus, the economy as a whole.
In developing its national skills strategy, the South African Department of Labour looked to learn from other countries' experience in developing its own
solutions and approaches to workforce development. In doing so, it identified the Investors in People UK standard as the best example in the world of an employer-based skills development strategy.We are frequently encouraged to look elsewhere for examples of effective policy and strategy. I am delighted to be able to say that the export of Investors in People to South Africa is an example of the UK leading and inspiring others. Incidentally, Investors in People has now been exported to more than 20 countries across Europe and beyond. It is the only people-management standard to have achieved international recognition anywhere in the world.
However, more important to this debate, since January 2001 Investors in People UK has worked with the Department of Labour to implement Investors in People in South Africa. Within a short time, a small team of dedicated and highly committed individuals has made enormous progress in raising awareness of the Investors in People programme and in involving employers and the workforce in tackling the skills development of their people.
In South Africa, Investors in People provides a framework that employers can use to improve the way they manage and develop their workforce. It has focused the employer on the importance and value of training and development, effective communication and good people management. If the organisations can demonstrate that they are meeting the requirements of the Investors in People standard, they receive recognition for that and become Investor in People organisations.
But Investors in People is much more than a business standard. It is a philosophy, a fundamental belief in the value that people can bring to organisations. At the heart of what organisations should be trying to achieve through good skills management is a shift in attitude among individuals, teams and companies that benefits the economy as a whole.
In the short time that the project has been running in South Africa a number of household names have become involved and committed to the principles of Investors in People. They include some of the largest employers in South Africa, such as BMW, Volkswagen, Old Mutual and South African Breweries. Equally importantly, there are many smaller organisations, for example, the Du Toit Farming Estate in Kromfontein, a rural farm in the Western Cape, which had a chronic skills shortage and where Investors in People was used to improve workforce development, communication and feedback from the workers and encourage a high degree of skills.
Last year I had the opportunity to go to South Africa to present the awards to companies, large, medium and small. I was thrilled by the excitement of workers who, never having had an opportunity previously to develop their skills, had gained such opportunity by taking part in this initiative. It was an important moment in my life.
Just as important, the South African Government are demonstrating that they believe that Investors in People can play a role in developing the skills of their own employees. The DfID strategy rightly points out that to some extent the development of effective government policy and strategy is held back by lack of skills and experience of the civil service in Pretoria. While the Investors in People standard will not cure that problem immediately, it can help to make the process of improving skills and management much easier. The involvement of the Department of Labour, the Department for Public Service and Administration and the Department of Trade and Industry are all to the benefit of the economic development of this country.
Of course, it is important to acknowledge that we cannot simply take one approach from the UK and apply it to another country without understanding the context and relevant issues in that country. For example, in South Africa the standard has been adapted to ensure that employers are developing their people in line with legislation on equity. That will play an important role in ensuring that people who previously had no access to training or development now have that opportunity.
By 2005 the South African Government anticipate that over 500 organisations will have benefited from the new Investors in People programme, reaching a huge number of people employed in large and medium-sized companies and the public sector. That will be the platform for helping thousands of other smaller businesses and their workforces in South Africa.
I am pleased and honoured to have this opportunity to draw the attention of the House to this project and to the wider success of our UK standard of Investors in People that is working successfully in this developing nation. I would encourage the Minister to consider further the role that Investors in People can play in supporting the DfID strategy, not only in South Africa but beyond. I note that the DfID strategy does not at this stage include any reference to Investors in People. That is understandable because in the past it has been seen as simply a UK standard. However, now that it has been applied in other parts of the world, it would be good if this could be reflected and that the level of co-operation we have been able to establish with the South African Government were recognised and built on to make it an even more widely accepted and used international standard.
We have learnt much from our own approach and from sharing our experiences. It has been a cost-effective and beneficial means of supporting the development of the South African economy. I look forward to returning next year and seeing the smiling faces of workers who never before had the opportunity for proper training and development and being involved in a great expansion of skills and people development.
5.35 p.m.
Lord Griffiths of Fforestfach: My Lords, like the last
speaker I too thank the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, for introducing the debate. I was delighted to hear the enthusiasm of the noble Lord, Lord Sawyer, reporting on Investors in People. I must declare a potential, not actual, conflict of interest. A proposal I want to consider later could have a financial benefit for an institution with which I am closely involved in the City of London.As mentioned by the noble Earl, the situation in Africa can only be described as really dire. Without repeating what has been said, I shall mention a few points. GDP per capita in the region throughout the nineties has declined by roughly half a percentage point. Twenty countries in sub-Saharan Africa are poorer now than they were in 1990. They count for more than half of the region's population. According to the UN, 200 million people are under-nourished. Malnutrition is a leading cause of the death of children under five.
In over one-third of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa, every other child is out of school. On present trends, which are improving slightly, Africa will not witness universal primary education until 2100. One in six children dies under the age of five. As has been mentioned, 25 million people in sub-Saharan Africa have HIV; 10 million children are orphaned by AIDS.
The conclusion of the UN and UNICEF is that,
- "Africa saw some success stories during the 1990s but, on balance, the continent's record in moving towards the Millennium Development Goals has been inadequate, especially for the poor. Twenty-three sub-Saharan countries are failing in half or more of the goals; twelve do not have enough data to be assessed . . . With the exception of safe water, regional progress was less than one-tenth of the agreed target between 1990 and 2000."
I think we would all agree that that is a dire picture.
There are examples of success. One was given by the noble Earl—Mozambique. Uganda and Tanzania are others. In parts of the world with which I am more familiar, especially China, there has been spectacular success. In the light of that, surely the millennium goals are to be welcomed. They set clear targets which cover not only poverty but a whole range of indicators of social well-being. Sometimes those targets are attacked because they are arbitrary: 2015 is an arbitrary date. The period 1990–2015, 25 years, is again an arbitrary time period. However, I value the targets because they focus our attention on the urgency of the problem and the need for action now. Without those targets we would be less well off.
The danger today is that of indifference in developed countries. One may ask why the situation in sub-Saharan Africa is so dire. Partly, the reasons are external. They face, for example, a decline in the price of exports. Agricultural protection in both Europe and America is, frankly, a disgrace. It would be a tremendous boost in terms of trade and jobs to sub-Saharan Africa if agricultural protection was removed here, in other countries and in the US.
There are also internal factors. There have been weaknesses of domestic governance; misdirected policies; an investment climate which is not conducive to growth and productivity; and—dare one mention it?—there has been corruption. That is why the
NePAD initiative is very important. Its principle is that Africa is saying that its development is an African responsibility and that it wishes to own it. Therefore, through peace, security and good governance, it can do something about it.Furthermore, in the community of those interested in development—especially the World Bank—it has now become generally accepted that we cannot have real progress in reducing poverty in Africa unless the African economies themselves are prepared to strengthen the private sectors in their market economies and have private sector growth. For that to occur, one needs macroeconomic stability. There cannot be widely fluctuating budget deficits and inflation. One needs incentives to save for investment and for risk-taking and, in many countries, much clearer definitions of property rights and enforcement of contracts.
The conclusion of the World Bank, when surveying the whole area, was very interesting. It said:
- "Clearly experience shows that the private market economy must be the engine of growth".
That is why we need a boost to official development aid. Some are very much opposed to it. It must be said that in the past official development aid has been wasted, abused and even stolen. However, without a major boost in official development aid as NePAD and African economies are prepared to strengthen their market economies, we shall never realise the millennium development goals. In that respect, I applaud an initiative by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, introduced at the end of his pre-Budget Report last November; namely, the international development financing facility. Noble Lords may think it extremely generous my saying that, because on some issues I have not found myself on the same side as the Chancellor. But in another place Michael Howard, in immediately responding to the Chancellor's Statement, said:
- "I start on a note of consensus. I welcome what the Chancellor said in his closing remarks about the relief of global poverty. He said that he welcomed the support that that would receive from all quarters of the House, and he was absolutely right. We support those measures".—[Official Report, Commons, 27/11/02; col. 327.]
Basically, the Chancellor's proposal related to how one could get the extra £50 billion aid mentioned. Given the state of the world and individual economies, I cannot see that money coming from fresh aid. The Chancellor proposed that individual countries make a commitment not simply to give aid on an annual basis, but, for instance, for 15 years. Therefore, through the international capital markets, one could raise money by issuing bonds. Individual governments could then disperse that money as extra aid between now and 2015.
At the very least, the proposal means that the time profile of aid would change. There would be a major frontloading of aid between now and 2015 and perhaps a reduction thereafter. Some would argue that as aid increased and visible improvement was evident, it would be highly likely that the level of aid itself would also increase.
I very much back the proposal. The part I find attractive—it may not appeal to all Members of the House—is the emphasis placed by the Treasury on conditionality. The aid must meet certain conditions. Each individual country that was part of this international development financing facility would be able to lay down conditions. The US has effectively already done so through its millennium challenge account. We have the opportunity to be very creative in how we approach the issue. We could involve the NGOs and the private sector more.
This is an ambitious proposal, but, given the dire nature of the situation in sub-Saharan Africa, nothing short of an imaginative gesture will tackle the problem. I believe therefore that we should support strongly the Chancellor's initiative.
5.46 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Chelmsford: My Lords, I greatly welcome this timely debate initiated by the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich. The Church of England fully supports the Millennium Development Goals and is using them as a basis for its development and advocacy work. However, based on current trends, we are concerned, as other noble Lords have indicated, that most of these goals will not be reached in southern Africa by 2015.
To reverse the stagnation or increase in poverty, hunger, child malnutrition, HIV/AIDS prevalence, deforestation and degradation will, at the very minimum, require massive year-on-year investment in basic health and education services, sustaining rural livelihoods, and social and economic infrastructure. It will also require consistent and concentrated political commitment from governments and donors to prioritise poverty in their domestic and foreign aid spending, and a furthering and strengthening of participatory models of development.
Several avenues exist for mobilising the required investment and plugging the increasing outflow of resources from southern African countries. One is an increase in bilateral overseas development aid to the long promised 0.7 per cent of GDP by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries with increasing expenditure on the poorest countries and not those that carry more strategic or political importance to donor countries. To that end, as has already been indicated, Christian Aid welcomes and supports the Chancellor's proposal for an international finance facility, which is intended to double the amount of developmental aid from OECD countries by 2015. It has grave concerns, however, that countries will have to continue to open up their markets indiscriminately as a condition for accessing more resources from this facility.
Another avenue has to be the full cancellation of the external bilateral and multilateral debts, which date from the era of the oil crisis and structural adjustment policy lending, of Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, Tanzania and Lesotho, especially debt owed to the World Bank and IMF.
There is also the non-reciprocal opening of European Union, north American and Asian markets to specially processed agricultural, textile and clothing exports from southern African countries, which would encourage more domestic and foreign investment and therefore growth.
Lastly, one could increase the terms of trade in southern African countries by setting a target for an end to agricultural subsidies in OECD countries that continue to distort global markets for many commodities.
As other noble Lords have stressed, we are all aware of the frightening escalation of HIV/AIDS and its devastating impact on households, communities and economies in southern Africa. That, and the prospect of another year of serious staple food shortages across the region, is plunging large numbers of southern Africans into ever deepening poverty, thus compromising future agricultural production and rural livelihoods. In the spirit of a global partnership, the donor community needs to scale up dramatically and immediately its development assistance to southern Africa.
I shall focus on two main concerns. The first is what the MDGs can achieve. We all recognise that the MDGs are an important symbolic expression of the mutual responsibility of rich and poor countries for creating a more equal world. That has inspired the World Bank and other lenders to commit to new models of development partnership, where aid recipient governments and citizens, instead of lenders and donors, are in charge of developing their vision and journey. Although initial evidence indicates that the mindsets, cultures, and political commitments of donors and aid-recipient governments are still steeped in old ways, it is at least a step in the right direction.
The MDGs are an important mobilising, advocacy and campaigning tool for citizens, parliamentarians and development activities in development countries to advocate increased bilateral donor spending in budget debates, debt cancellation, fairer trading policies and spending on policies, activities and facilities that will contribute to poverty reduction. The MDGs are also a powerful tool for advocating the coherence of international financial institutions policy conditionalities and international trade rules and agreements with the vision of the United Nations for a more equal, less divided world.
The MDGs can encourage output-orientated policy making and expenditure allocation in national and local budgets. The MDGs allow citizens and policy makers in developed and developing countries to assess progress towards eradicating poverty. The MDGs can be used by citizens in developing countries to press for political commitments by
their governments to reduce poverty through policy reforms, institutional change and budget reallocations.The MDGs can establish clear criteria for spending priorities in the donor community. The MDGs can achieve all those aims.
My second focus is global partnership for development. The goal to develop a global partnership for development will be realised only once donor governments and the institutions that they control—the IMF and World Bank—stop receiving debt service repayments from low-income countries on debts that have accumulated as a result of the 1980s debt crisis, and start working towards a mechanism that will guarantee sustainable debt levels in future.
For example, Mozambique, to which other noble Lords referred, Zambia, Tanzania and Lesotho will still pay more debt service to the international financial institutions, bilateral donors and commercial creditors in 2005 than they did in 2000. That clearly threatens the global partnership and those countries' ability to finance the interventions needed to achieve the MDGs. The Church of England's Public Affairs Unit has been calling on the IFIs, the DfID and the international community at large to measure debt sustainability against the resources needed to reach the millennium development goals in each country, and has called for a new debt relief mechanism.
The Public Affairs Unit has also urged the UK Government to increase their spending on HIV/AIDS by at least £750 million a year, to bring it in line with the UN call for a fivefold increase in global resources to win the fight against HIV/AIDS. That money should be channelled mostly through existing bilateral and multilateral aid mechanisms. Without massively scaled up funds to implement HIV/AIDS prevention programmes and to provide sufficient care to peoples and communities living with HIV/AIDS, as well as to invest in public services and economic sectors decimated by the epidemic, six out of the eight MDGs will not be met.
Finally, as was stressed by the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, southern African governments themselves need to commit to a long-term investment in poverty reduction and to be held accountable for the resources that they manage on behalf of their countries. That will depend on visionary and dedicated political leadership committed to poverty reduction as a priority and to strong, well-resourced public institutions and mechanisms that can sustain and deliver basic services and thereby bring fresh hope to the southern African population.
5.57 p.m.
Lord Desai: My Lords, I owe an apology to your Lordships, especially the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, for not being present when he opened the debate. The previous debate collapsed early and my calculations went awry.
I bring no special knowledge—I have done nothing practical all my life—but I can speak as an academic. Fifty years ago, we would have had a similar debate about not Africa but Asia. Fifty years ago, we were worried about starvation—famines—in China and India, that the growing mass of the Asian population would be unable to feed itself and that Asia might become a dangerous place.
I say that partly to illustrate that it is easy to be gloomy but things may change, and partly to pose a question about which I have been worrying quite a lot lately. How is it that, compared to the early 1960s, when we were much more optimistic about Africa, which had a much more favourable resource situation, and were much more pessimistic about Asia, today, 50 years on, we have reversed our regions of pessimism and optimism? We now regard Asia as something of a success—perhaps east Asia more than south Asia—and Africa as a dire problem. We must continually think about that, because there are lessons to be learnt for Africa from Asia's success that we have not yet learnt.
I have arrived at the conclusion that Asian governments, corrupt as they often are—they are not all democratic, either, although they are more so recently—have in some sense been more responsive to their people and less alienated from them than African governments. That is a generalisation and, as with all generalisations, one may point to particular exceptions. But neither a Mobutu nor a Bokassa regime has happened in Asia. The worst was Marcos. Corrupt as the Asian elite are, they do not salt away their money in Switzerland or France; they spend it at home. That shows not that they are not corrupt but that they are not alienated from their people, which is an important element of governance.
About 10 years ago, Basil Davidson wrote a book called The Black Man's Burden, in which he discussed the failure of African countries to make a success of nation state formation. It is a burden. The important aspect is not only what we call governance, but when the members of the political elite become responsive and not alienated from their own people. We need to look at how Asia has succeeded in that regard. Asia has multi-ethnic populations as in Malaysia; it has had a colonial experience; it has had all sorts of natural disasters; but it has managed.
From the 1970s to the 1990s there have been more civil and international wars and conflicts in Africa than in Asia. Somehow Asia escaped early and has not had a serious war since the 1970s. But southern Africa, in particular—Angola, Mozambique and other countries—has been through vicious wars. The international community has either stood by, in some senses, has aided or abetted in the wars, or has failed to solve them. Today, happily, apart from the sad case
of Zimbabwe, there are few such situations. But the cessation of hostilities in Angola and Mozambique, in particular, and the removal of apartheid in South Africa have not yet led to positive fruits. Such changes take time. We must remember that much of southern Africa is in a post-conflict recovery situation, and development is difficult in those circumstances.Many noble Lords referred to rural development, especially in agriculture. Asia had a green revolution that transformed the prospect of feeding people in India, China and throughout the continent. Such a revolution has not yet touched Africa. African agricultural productivity was, broadly, higher than that in Asia in the 1960s. Africa is now behind; its productivity has not grown, and, if anything, its agriculture has deteriorated.
Part of the answer lies in what the European Union and the USA have been doing. As many noble Lords pointed out, the European Union's agricultural policy does positive harm to African agriculture. I have been quoted as calling it a "crime against humanity", and I stand by that. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford, who is present, will remember that we participated in a press conference at which we highlighted the example of Ghana. Ghana's tomato industry was encouraged; people said that it should have tomato-canning factories; but then Italians ruined the Ghanaian tomato industry by dumping their surplus tomatoes in the country. How can one have a growing agricultural industry in a country on which a very rich continent continually dumps its agricultural surplus because it has a horrid agricultural subsidy policy?
Apparently, the European Union will now protect its subsidies policy under the guise of an environmental issue. I have never heard anything more sickening than what the EU is doing in the WTO negotiations. But let us hope that the WTO negotiations on agricultural adjustment will be successful. Let us hope that the resistance to it will not be successful and that export subsidies will be cut. I know that the DfID and all my noble friends in the Government will try their hardest to reverse the EU's position and to make it a better behaved institution than at present. We should also urge our American friends to reduce their agricultural subsidies so that we do not do any more harm.
Do not give more aid; but do not do so much harm. If you give 50 billion dollars in aid and 500 billion dollars in agricultural subsidies, do not increase the aid, but reduce the 500 billion dollars of subsidies. I would not even mind if the saved money was kept. But the 500 billion dollars does enormous harm. Our stance ought to be much stronger. I wish that the anti-globalisation movement demonstrated against agricultural subsidies rather than against the WTO—but that is another story.
I believe that the essence of NePAD is right. I think that eventually African development will be solved by Africa. I am not optimistic about altruism as a driving force in societies. Economists tend not to trust altruism; they trust self-interest. If we can stop
harming Africa, encourage trade with it, and encourage it to invest in rural development, perhaps the millennium development goals will not be realised by 2015, but at least we will be well on our way to doing so.6.6 p.m.
Baroness Whitaker: My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, for initiating this timely debate and for the thoughtful and committed way in which he introduced it. As he says, the UN millennium development goals risk not being met in some countries of southern Africa. The goals deal with tasks for which aid in poor countries is necessary but not sufficient. Indeed, in the regions where the goals look as if they will be met, such as India and China, much more is going on than development assistance. There is significant investment in enhanced crops, for instance, such as GM cotton, which has achieved an 80 per cent increase in yield while cutting pesticide use by two thirds.
I want to mention some links between aid and the other essentials for reaching the goals; and to identify some of the gaps in the way that we look at the goals. Some of my examples go beyond southern Africa, but the principles are all the same. Although aid can create the basis, in terms of health, education, adequate water supply and so on, the engine for achieving development is the economy, fuelled by the nation's trade, its foreign direct investment, and, in many poor countries, the remittances of its emigrants. Fifty per cent of Lesotho's GNP is contributed by remittances. Let us not forget that benefit from economic migration.
Foreign direct investment has not been adequate in the poor countries of southern Africa. Indeed, the richest 20 per cent of the world's countries hog 68 per cent of foreign direct investment. That is hardly surprising. Investors will not come, no matter how cheap the labour rates, if there is not the basic national asset of a healthy, educated population. The millennium development goals rightly prioritise those. But other elements are also necessary: the good governance that rests on accountability, political stability, an effective state, transparent and honest financial transactions, as the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, mentioned—those other national assets that are achieved in democracies with a strong civil society. There are some in southern Africa. They are, in effect, the creation of a local culture. They are inherently rights-based. But they are not explicit in the millennium development goals; we have to read them in. I am indebted to a very interesting new paper, Heaven or Hubris, in the latest Development Policy Review by Simon Maxwell, director of the Overseas Development Institute, for clarifying some of those issues. I add that, where rights-based goals have not been met and there is no democracy, in extreme poverty, there is the breeding ground for violent resentment, insecurity and eventually terror.
The Cotonou agreement was a good model for governance goals, although we have moved on from its trade policies to the Doha agenda. I ask my noble
friend the Minister how Cotonou is working now. We should also applaud the ongoing march of NePAD—applause echoed by other noble Lords—which includes the goals of transparency and good governance on which my noble friend has worked so hard and about which my noble friend Lord Lea of Crondall will speak.The critical path of development is also driven off-course by events that particularly deter foreign investment—war, drought and famine. The resulting huge displacement of people is additionally destabilising. Nearly three quarters of the world's refugees, far from coming to the West—least of all, the United Kingdom—are in developing countries. I saw the burden on the Cote d'Ivoire of Liberian refugees, when I was there just before the coup. Our Department for International Development does a great deal to minimise the tragic human consequences of events and help prevent them from recurring, giving well over £100 million of humanitarian aid bilaterally and through the EU. My right honourable friend the Chancellor's proposal for an international financing facility, described by the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths of Fforestfach, could lever up aid, so that we would be well on the way to meeting the goals.
There has been progress. Untying aid, as the Government did two years ago, has made UK aid, arguably, three times as effective, through enabling more appropriate technology and assisting local procurement. Would that our French and Japanese allies could bring themselves to do the same. Jubilee's research into the effects of the debt relief that my right honourable friend the Chancellor was instrumental in procuring shows large increases in spend on primary education. In 10 heavily indebted poor countries, including Cameroon, Malawi and Rwanda, education spend rose from a little over 900 million dollars—I am sorry that I have dropped into using dollars—in 1998 to 1.3 billion dollars in 2002, and health spending from 466 million dollars in 1998 to nearly 800 million dollars in 2003. Those are not huge amounts by our standards, by they go a long way in the rural areas of Africa.
Trade, the other part of the engine of development, is deeply undermined in southern Africa by the EU and the US approach to tariffs, as all noble Lords said. It is surely a bit rich for the USA to demand liberalisation abroad, while protecting its own vulnerable industries from fair competition from the developing world. The new and authoritative report of the Select Committee on Economic Affairs on globalisation says:
- "developed countries' protectionism . . . with regard to agricultural and textile products in particular is wholly objectionable and unjustifiable".
I agree with Oxfam that there is need for care in doing away with protection for developing countries' own produce. As my noble friend Lord Desai implied, countries that recently emerged from poverty in Asia sheltered their local industries while they grew
competitive. Surely, what we need is liberalisation on the part of the rich countries who can afford it and who claim to value fair competition, not least in the interest of their consumers, combined with managed and gradual progress from protection policies by poor countries, supported by credit and other facilities.The noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, spoke tellingly about Mozambique. I would like to add one example from their sugar industry. Before its war, Mozambique was a very successful exporter of sugar. That was discouraged, incidentally, by the IMF for reasons best known to itself. But Mozambique picked up again and now produces well over 200,000 tonnes a year. It is produced at half the price of European beet sugar. Would not that help European consumers?
But Mozambique was allowed in 2001 to export only 8,000 tonnes to the EU and 12,000 to the US. Oxfam estimates that, even with a slightly rising quota, in 2004 Mozambique will have lost the chance to earn perhaps £108 million. I need hardly remind your Lordships that in Mozambique many people are poor beyond a European's worst nightmare. Three per cent of its population will starve without food aid. Your Lordships might like to know that European consumers and taxpayers pay £1.6 billion a year to fund European exports of sugar to undercut sugar from developing countries and that British Sugar's profit margin in 2001 was 21 per cent.
The WTO asked last week for the elimination of all export subsidies for farm goods over a 10-year period. The European Commission says that the proposal is "unbalanced" and inequitable. The stark truth is that the millennium development goals, on which much of the peace of the world depends—as well as the lives of millions of ordinary people—cannot be met in southern Africa unless farm trade is eased and market access made free. As today's Financial Times puts it,
- "If the deadlock on agriculture is to be broken, the onus lies with the EU. Its farm subsidies are the world's biggest and most trade-disturbing and are matched by grotesque import barriers".
I ask my noble friend what the UK objectives in the European Commission and at the WTO meeting next month will be. How will our Government help developing country members raise their voices and determine the agenda? Farther ahead, can she promise that, at the ministerial WTO conference in Cancun in September, there will be priority for sorting out trade equity before dealing with new issues?
6.18 p.m.
The Earl of Listowel: My Lords, I too am grateful to my noble friend Lord Sandwich for tonight's debate. I am advised by Christian Aid that the greatest impediment to the achievement of the millennium development goals is the spread of HIV/AIDS. I will concentrate on how we might inhibit the spread of HIV/AIDS in Angola and ask the Minister whether she considers that Her Majesty's Government give sufficient priority to the issue.
Angola is of strategic importance in southern Africa because of its location and its diamond and oil wealth. All its regions—except Cabinda—are now at peace, after decades of civil war. Despite the challenge of resettling former combatants, displaced people and returning refugees, it has the potential in the longer term to be an engine for development in the region.
Mr Lukamba, secretary-general of UNITA and leader of the forces that fought against the ruling MPLA, recently made a historic visit to London. His calls for greater transparency and better provision for all excluded groups in Angola were, I think, welcomed by Her Majesty's Government. In his speech to an audience at Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, he said:
- "I also come to advocate dignity for the millions of displaced Angolans, the refugees, the demobilised soldiers from various armies, those with physical disabilities caused by the war, orphans, widows and the thousands of children who populate the streets with no support and subject to predators".
In 2001, a group of parliamentarians met some of these children. Orlando was 12 and slept under a hot-dog stand near to the United Nations residence in Luanda. He was interested in football and basketball and we talked about that for some while. He would gather his food from the dustbins—chicken scraps or whatever else was available.
We spoke for some while before another boy interrupted us. This boy lived in the sewers nearby. He entered the street through a road drain. Previously, he had threatened a member of the UNICEF staff with a knife and torn that man's shirt as he had lunged at him with the knife. Orlando was intimidated by him, as we were.
If we fail to inform young Angolans about the dangers of unprotected sex and of other means to prevent HIV infection, the HIV/AIDS orphans may come to outnumber the Orlandos—those displaced by war—on the streets. Furthermore, there is the risk that these many thousands of uncared-for children may become a source of instability in Angola. Your Lordships may find the following extract from the Economist magazine of 30th November 2002, headed "Forty million orphans", of interest. I quote:
- "In the rest of Africa, the big worry is orphans with guns. They are 'putty in the hands of warlords', says Hamish Young of UNICEF. Abandoned children know their lives are likely to be short, so they figure they may as well seek thrills while they can. Gangs or rebel armies can provide substitute families, while
- orphans can make attractively nihilistic recruits. Children as young as five fought in civil wars in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Congo and Uganda and have been responsible for many of the worst atrocities".
It was encouraging to learn from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office that the wife of President dos Santos, Mrs Anna Paula dos Santos, recently presented a three-hour television programme on the prevention of HIV/AIDS which, according to the World Health Organisation, gave a very strong and clear message to the viewers. However, I am advised that there is still no clear priority on the part of the government of Angola on countering HIV/AIDS. One understands why this should be so. The government of Angola face urgent demands to respond to the hunger of their people, to the need for resettlement, to rebuild the nation following the civil war and to prepare for elections.
Mr Van Dunem, vice-minister for health, spoke to Mr Baillil, the World Bank official responsible for HIV/AIDS in the autumn of last year. The vice-minister requested funding to provide retro-viral treatment to mothers to prevent their transmitting HIV/AIDS to their infants. The expense of such treatment would confine its use to four of Angola's regions. The World Bank representative urged a broader public health campaign which would impact on 80 per cent of those affected. The two parties, as I understand it, are still in discussion on the way ahead.
Perhaps I may detail a little further the effect of HIV/AIDS on a nation's development. HIV/AIDS orphans are more likely to lose both parents; both their parents are likely to share the contagion. In Africa, these children may well be taken into the extended family or wider community. Inevitably, then, they will normally stretch the resources of families already living in poverty. The same group of parliamentarians visited a family in which the mother was an aunt to children whose parents had died from HIV/AIDS and she had taken in the three children. We spoke to the eldest son, who was bright and lively and aspired to become a doctor. But one must be concerned at the additional strain on that family and any aspiration in that direction would be unlikely to be fulfilled.
Girls and boys are removed from school to assist their hard-pressed families or to care for parents who are suffering from AIDS-related diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis. Key workers appear particularly likely to become infected with HIV/AIDS, so infant and maternal mortality rates rise as lack of professional staff worsens. Angola, according to the UN, already has the second highest infant mortality rate in the world. I look forward to hearing from my noble friend Lord Chan on the situation for mothers and girls in southern Africa.
The same group of parliamentarians saw how effective a small local organisation of young people could be in promoting awareness of HIV/AIDS. In Lubango, a town in southern Angola, we visited the offices of Prazedor. In the local market, young people were speaking to young men about condom use. They were distributing literature and ribbons to cars and
passers-by in the streets. While doing so, these young Angolans were developing skills in book-keeping and management valuable for their future careers.A senior diplomat from Mozambique recently advised me that we need to understand two things as we address HIV/AIDS in Africa. First, we need to understand the reluctance of adult Africans to speak about sexual matters with children and young people. Secondly, we need to understand the importance of small organisations working in the community of the kind I mentioned and to support them.
The gentleman's first point may help to explain some of the significant resistance to developing a robust, coherent, clear programme against HIV/AIDS in Angola. It may therefore be all the more important that HIV/AIDS prevention is given the greatest weight in discussions between Her Majesty's Government and Angola. However, I am advised that HIV/AIDS prevention seems to lack priority both in the UK's most recent strategy for Angola and the strategies of the European Union and the United Nations. I have not read these documents, but have received this advice from one of the NGOs working in the area.
Like other noble Lords, I pay tribute to the hard work that the Minister and her colleagues in government undertake in order to improve the outcome of the people in Africa. I conclude therefore by asking the Minister whether she is satisfied with the priority given to HIV/AIDS in Her Majesty's Government's plans for future engagement with Angola. Will she continue to press the Angola Government and the international community hard on this matter? There may be continued resistance because of what appears to be a cultural taboo on the subject—and for other reasons—but success appears to be vital to the achievements of the millennium development goals.
I have not given the Minister notice of those questions, and I shall be happy to receive a written reply if that would be more convenient. I look forward to her response.
6.28 p.m.
Lord Chan: My Lords, I add my congratulations and thanks to my noble friend Lord Sandwich on securing a debate that has an urgency now sadly obscured by political developments elsewhere in the world, particularly in the Middle East. As has been pointed out by other noble Lords, the Department for International Development has set crucial targets for southern Africa. The foremost of them is the reduction of poverty by half by 2015—the so-called millennium development goals which also have associated targets such as the provision of basic healthcare and universal access to primary education by the same date. They are essential to the welfare of poor people, particularly of women and children.
I will focus on the needs of women and children living in the five southern African countries of Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa and Swaziland. I intend to ask the Minister how models of
good practice funded by DfID in other developing countries may be implemented in southern Africa for improving the health of women and children.As all noble Lords agree, the most important health problem in southern Africa, and in other countries of Africa, is HIV/AIDS. Recent ante-natal surveys of pregnant women by the UN AIDS department of the WHO revealed that between one in five and one in three South African women between the ages of 15 and 49 years—that is, those in the reproductive age range—are infected with the HIV virus. As the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, said, some 60 million people in Africa have been infected with HIV.
This finding means that in the next 10 years some 5 to 7 million people in southern Africa will die during their prime years, leaving some 2 million orphaned children. I have gleaned this information from DfID's report on southern Africa of October 2002.
Poor people with HIV infection, eating inadequate food, lacking access to medical treatment and living in poor conditions are vulnerable to other opportunistic infections such as tuberculosis. Malaria is also endemic in southern Africa. A combination of HIV, TB and malaria kills millions of people, particularly in Africa.
Currently, 10 per cent of new HIV cases in southern Africa arise from mother to new-born baby transmission, an infection that can be reduced substantially if retroviral drugs are given to pregnant women. But these drugs are not available to many pregnant women in southern Africa. Instead, we read of advice being given—which we would give to women in western developed countries—that "If you have HIV, do not breast-feed your baby". If this kind of advice were followed in southern Africa it would almost certainly mean that the baby of an HIV-infected mother who was not breast-fed would die of diarrhoea.
Infection rates of HIV among girls between 15 and 19 years is alarmingly high. This reflects the low rate of condom use in sexual activity—yet another area of healthcare on which we need to focus.
But other hazards also cause premature deaths among pregnant women. The lack of access to ante-natal services will lead to women dying from undiagnosed high blood pressure, anaemia and difficult births that require admission to hospital.
Treatment of tuberculosis in young adults and children can save lives. A BCG vaccination is particularly helpful in preventing tuberculosis in children. Malarial infection can be mitigated by giving children anti-malarial drugs as a preventive measure, and the doses required are much smaller than those needed for treatment.
In South Africa, the majority of poor people are black Africans. Only one in four has access to health services compared to eight in 10 white people.
Although the picture of poor health I have reported is very depressing, solutions to address them are available and have proved to be life-saving in poor countries, in Uganda and in Asia. We know that
women with primary education are able to keep themselves and their children in better health than uneducated women. The best example of this success is in Kerala, a southern state of India, where the majority of people are poor but have health indicators similar to those in richer countries such as Thailand. The reason is clear. A woman who is educated makes good decisions about the care of her family, of her children and, particularly, of herself. One of DfID's targets is universal access to primary education. Girls in southern Africa must be made a priority group for such education.Access to basic healthcare is denied to three out of four black Africans. Surely this is an area of service in which DfID should encourage African governments to invest and to work in partnership with NePAD, our own Government, the European Union and voluntary organisations and charities which have a track record in the successful transfer of skills in developing countries.
In the 1980s and early 1990s, DfID's predecessor encouraged British institutions to work in partnership with governments in developing countries. I was privileged to work with my colleagues in northern India on such a scheme. I spent about 10 years going to and from this country into the five poorest and most populated states of northern India to develop and improve basic services for pregnant women and babies. This process took between three to five years in the poorest state of all, Orissa—which had a problem with overwhelming floods only four years ago—but we were able to leave Orissa with local doctors, midwives and trained birth attendants to continue running a good-standard, sustainable service for poor people.
Even if we no longer want to engage in this kind of aid, we can encourage health teams from other countries, such as Thailand, to go to southern Africa to share their skills and their system for controlling the spread of HIV/AIDS. Thailand has been particularly commended by the WHO and other agencies for its successful control of the spread of HIV/AIDS.
I was privileged to take a team of doctors, nurses and managers from northern India to Thailand in 1992 to learn how HIV/AIDS was managed in the community in a developing country. The members of the team returned to India to implement what they had learnt in another developing country. I know that they have done well and are particularly satisfied with the sustainable pattern of management of this disease. Would this pattern of partnership be helpful in southern Africa? We will not know if we do not try it out. I await with interest the Minister's answer.
Medicines are expensive but they are essential for the treatment of people with infections. If products from western countries are too costly, why not buy generic drugs manufactured in Asian countries, such as India, where there is quality control of the drugs of companies based in this country?
We are all aware that the Government have done well in the area of overseas aid, but we need to work in more imaginative ways in partnership with our
African colleagues. I have been in touch with people from southern Africa who are living in the United Kingdom. They have said that they will be delighted to return to work in their former countries to assist in establishing and developing health services for mothers and children, but as British citizens.I look forward to the Minister's response. I have not given her notice of these questions but I hope that she will be able to comment on them.
6.39 p.m.
Lord Lea of Crondall: My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, on introducing this very important debate, even though I do not accept some of his key arguments. I shall come to that in a moment.
The main thrust of my remarks will be on the theme that G8 conditionality is now inescapable if the crisis in Africa is not to become chronic. The World Bank millennium development goals document refers to the problem of slow growth in the past decade, as the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, pointed out; hence these dreadful figures, which are growing, of the number of people living in poverty. To halve poverty by 2015, African economies will need to grow at a rate of 7 per cent per annum.
I am an economist of sorts. One has to be reasonably numerate about these matters, and I challenge anyone to say that they disagree with that kind of figure. But how do we get from where we are now to that point—which is a necessary condition, and certainly not a sufficient condition, for solving the problem?
I wear a new hat these days as vice-chair of the new All-Party Parliamentary Group on Africa, which I helped to set up, together with Hugh Bayley, MP. Its terms of reference are to promote Africa—and, in particular, issues relating to NePAD—in Parliament. I wish to emphasise with all the power at my command that we have to put a very big number of eggs into the NePAD project. It is home grown in Africa. It is, to coin a phrase, the new agenda for the new Africa. It is relevant to the kind of challenges identified by the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths.
NePAD is in my view the most hopeful thing to have come out of Africa since the release of Nelson Mandela. I congratulate the British Government on their document, G8 Africa Action Plan: UK Implementation up to G8 Summit 2003—the Evian meeting at Lake Geneva this summer. Given that the meeting will take place in France, I hope that we shall have close relations with France in seeing what we can do to push the action plan forward. There are major problems—not so much between Britain and France, which it need hardly be said is the case, but in the peer review process.
The eight chapters of the NePAD document are important. I shall not list them all. The first deals with peace and security, and includes governance. All the chapters interconnect. We cannot cherry pick between them.
Perhaps I may quote some of the GDP figures for the period 1990–2000. There were falls in the figures as follows: for Sudan, the figure of 1,355 dollars per head was down to 315; Liberia—614 down to 258; Angola—1,076 down to 588; Zimbabwe—8,767 down to 5,408. No one can doubt the major connection in those countries with conflict and poor governance.
I accept all the points made about the finance facility, and I congratulate all those involved. I agree substantially with the points made about the WTO and shall return to a couple of them in a moment. But it will not do to propose all those billions of euros in terms of trade liberalisation—which is true—as if they somehow represent more than half the agenda. Can we seriously think that all the other matters in the NePAD document are not essential; and is that not the agenda which is now reaching a crisis point before, we hope, it goes substantially forward?
Perhaps I may add a further comment on our relations with France, as the major ex-colonial powers in Africa in this regard. I have always had a special interest in Anglo-French relations and I congratulate the two governments on the joint projects since St Malo. I shall attend a conference in Paris in March on making the trade union role in NePAD work from the ground up. I shall take the opportunity to hold discussions with French parliamentarians—wearing my Anglo-French parliamentary hat as well as the Africa one—on what we can do together to promote breakthroughs in NePAD.
I draw attention to the fact that the communique at Le Touquet last week contained a substantial section on Franco-British relations and co-operation in Africa. Ranging from the French Diplomatic Office being part of the British High Commission in Freetown through to joint visits to the Great Lakes and so on, there is a substantial and hopeful new opportunity. From reading the front page of the document, you would not think so; but on reading the inside pages one sees that there is now a creative opportunity for the British and the French to work together on African questions. I did not realise until I read the document in detail how committed France is to NePAD.
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