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My noble friend talked about DB schemes, buyouts, enhanced transfer values and cash baits, as did the noble Lord, Lord Oakeshott, and the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard. I would like to take that issue away and get some early focus on it. Perhaps we can invite those noble Lords who have contributed to the debate to come to a meeting so that we can scope out precisely what we are dealing with here. If the noble Lord has a letter that he is happy to share with us, that would also be helpful. Let us get the issue looked at again and understand the scale of the problem.
I hope that that has dealt with the issue. I suppose that in all of that, the noble Baroness may have gleaned that I would prefer that she withdraw her amendment, but I hope that I have given her clearly the assurances that she wanted. I have not addressed the issue of transfers-in, where we identified just two incidences where we would support those uninvested pots and pension credit on pension-sharing. Apart from that, we contemplate no other provisions.
Baroness Noakes: My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate, including those who did not support my amendments. I thank the Minister in particular for his detailed reply. He gathered from the way in which I introduced my amendments that I was seeking clarification and restatement. Although it would have been preferable in the Bill, to be honest, I did not expect the Minister to accede to that request. I had not appreciated that in proposing those amendments I was denying the Government or a future Government the ability to set annual limits in future. That was clearly my error.
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What the Minister had to say on the annual limit, the lifetime limit and transfers was broadly satisfactorily. I am grateful to him for restating that and basically saying that those things will be dealt with in 2017. There is an open issue on stranded pots. The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, made a good case, if it is backed by facts, for there being hardship or inequity in the current position. I hope that the Government are prepared to look at that.
I also pay tribute to the noble Baroness for opportunistically raising the issue of inducements in the context of transferring out of defined benefit schemes. I do not believe that it is to do with buyouts. The issue of offering inducements to people to move out of defined benefit schemes has been seen by some companies as a solution to some of the problems in a non-buyout situation—as an alternative to buyout. Those have been around for some time. Normally, they are regarded by companies as rather expensive because the trustees make the companies pay rather a lot of money, in my understanding, but it may well be that the practice has moved on. As we all know, the pension scene is fast-moving and I do not pretend to be up to date on everything. If the Minister is prepared to take those issues up, he may want to see the letter that my noble friend Lord Trenchard received as an example of what may be not good emerging practice. I am grateful to him for taking that up. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
[Amendments Nos. 49 and 50 not moved.]
Lord McKenzie of Luton moved Amendment No. 51:
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Tunnicliffe: My Lords, I beg to move that consideration on Report be now adjourned. In moving the Motion I suggest that Report begin again not before 8.30 pm.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
Millennium Development Goals
7.30 pm
Lord Alton of Liverpool asked Her Majesty’s Government what progress is being made with the millennium development goals, particularly in relation to levels of child mortality.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, this short dinner-hour debate revolves around a Question that I tabled seeking to establish what progress has been made in achieving the millennium development goals, particularly as they relate to child mortality. If the aim of the goals—to halve poverty by 2015—were to be realised, it would save the lives of 350,000 children a year. Sadly, it is because we have drifted so far from the targets that I invite the House to return to a subject so ably raised in a Cross-Bench debate initiated by my noble friend Lord Sandwich on 1 May.
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First, I express my gratitude to all noble Lords who are to speak tonight. In particular, I know that we wait in eager anticipation for the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Bates, who was a good friend when we served together in another place. His presence and the expertise that he will bring to your Lordships’ House are really welcome.
Just two weeks ago, I spent several days in Turkana and the Elemi triangle, where Ethiopia, Sudan and Kenya meet. Turkana is an arid desert covering 24,000 square miles and supporting about 500,000 nomadic people. The rains did not come this year, and the pressure on grazing land and families unable to feed themselves has been disastrous. For the Turkanas and their Ethiopian neighbours the Dassanech, or Merilles, whether we achieve our millennium goals is not simply of academic interest.
A young African priest, Father Steven Ochieng, took me to Merille and Turkana villages, between which he had brokered a ceasefire after years of debilitating conflict. In one settlement, many miles from any medical facility, a father approached us with his six year-old son, Juma Nyesej. Several days earlier, the boy had badly burnt himself and his wound had become infected. It was 150 miles to the nearest hospital in Lodwar. In the absence of roads, for most of the journey Father Steven used rough tracks to drive the child to the hospital.
The boy is now out of danger; one life has been saved. However, as the millennium development goals disappear into the ether, millions of other children will not be so fortunate. Juma’s story is a good example of what his Grace the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York said in July is the unique capacity of faith communities to reach some of the poorest regions in the world. “Yet”, as he correctly observed,
- “the effort involved in getting donor governments not to bypass indigenous faith communities for the sake of mega grants direct to UN agencies is unnecessarily difficult”.
In places such as Turkana, and all over Africa, the church has put most of the educational, health and social infrastructure in place. The World Health Organisation estimates that 40 per cent of healthcare in developing countries is provided by faith-based organisations. If we targeted more direct support to those groups instead of bypassing them, we might be closer to achieving our millennium goals.
I was struck that, while Governments fail to meet millennium targets for the provision of clean water, Steven Ochieng’s community has built 50 water catchment dams and drilled bore-holes that save lives every day. If we refocused some of our MDG strategy to work more closely with such providers, we would have a much better chance of achieving our targets. Our money is also less likely to disappear into phantom projects, corrupt contracts and dishonest pockets. Progress on providing clean water and sanitation, which is crucial to good health, especially children’s, is currently so far off-track in sub-Saharan Africa that the millennium development goals will not be met this century, let alone by 2015.
I particularly welcome the Minster’s response to the report that appeared in the Financial Times on 11 September saying that less than a quarter of
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Many deaths are linked to maternal health and, as the Royal College of Midwives pointed out in an excellent briefing distributed in advance of today’s debate, many of those deaths are avoidable. A child dies from malaria every 30 seconds. Yet recent analysis by the Kenya Medical Research Institute in Nairobi found that global spending on malaria control in 2007 amounted to less than $1 per person at risk and is up to 450 per cent less than what is required. The noble Baroness, Lady Chalker, will concentrate her remarks on malaria. I welcome that, as she knows far more about this than I do.
We must also have a care that our solutions to problems do not make the situation worse. In Turkana, I visited St Luke’s home for the deaf, which was opened in 2004. Here there are 74 deaf children, half of whom are girls and half of whom are boys. Ben Janssen, the Dutch co-ordinator, told me that these children are “the tip of an iceberg”; many more lie abandoned in their villages. Tragically, more than half the children at St Luke’s were not born deaf; their hearing was lost after being given too great a dose of quinine as a treatment for malaria. Other causes of deafness are meningitis and measles. Good primary healthcare could have saved the hearing of these children, but now at least, thanks to St Luke’s, some possibilities are opening up for them and, unlike many children, they are at least well cared for, properly nourished and fed. By contrast, every day, 25,000 people die of hunger-related causes. Many are children; one child dies of hunger every five seconds. Save the Children does an admirable job in keeping us briefed on their plight.
Before we rose for the Recess, on 3 July I initiated a debate in your Lordships’ House on the effects of the world food crisis. As things stand, despite the goals set out eight years ago, it is anticipated that the number of malnourished children will rise in 32 countries. Even before the crisis, about 3.5 million children died annually of malnutrition; the World Bank says that 854 million people were already hungry before prices started to rise, including 178 million children under the age of five who were stunted. Malnutrition will grievously set back our proclaimed hopes of progress for children in many parts of the world. I should very much like to hear the Minister’s assessment of current levels of food aid necessary to fend off starvation, particularly in places such as Ethiopia. The acute nature of the crisis in some parts of the world has already forced the World Food Programme to reallocate some of its resources. It has suspended some of its feeding programmes in various parts of the world, for example to 450,000 children in Cambodia, because it simply does not have funds to meet all the challenges. World Food Programme representatives in 78 countries around the world are facing similar dilemmas.
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What impact will this situation and the slide towards recession faced by many of our economies have on our ability to meet our declared objectives? The auguries are not good. When he spoke to the Lambeth Conference in July, the Prime Minister admitted that on current rates child and infant mortality will not be cut to the proposed 2015 levels until 2050, universal child education will not be achieved by 2015 and poverty will not be halved,
Whose fault is this? On 5 September, it emerged that 22 of the world’s wealthiest nations are delivering less than half the aid that they promised to developing states. Only Denmark, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands and Luxembourg honoured a pledge to raise their giving to 0.7 per cent. The rest averaged just 0.28 per cent. Where does the United Kingdom stand in this regard?
It is not merely government whose rhetoric and actions have not always converged. Huge corporations have ethical policies in place but fail to walk the talk. Christian Aid, in a recent report, said that 5.6 million children’s lives could be saved if the world’s largest companies were to stop cheating the poorest countries out of tax revenues to which they are entitled, which are worth £82 billion a year. However, the millennium goals are not simply about what government can do. We can all play our part. In Turkana I saw many examples, from irrigation schemes to new classrooms, of how British generosity is helping to save lives. I saw a girls’ orphanage built by young people from Stonyhurst College in Lancashire. I also saw some wonderful self-help sustainable initiatives. Lake Turkana is the world’s largest permanent desert lake. Although the water is saline and undrinkable, the Turkana refer to the lake as “anam Ka’alakol”, which means the sea of many fish. It was the lake’s fish that provided the inspiration to begin a programme of building boats for the Turkana nomads.
Believing in the truth of the old adage that it is better to teach a man how to fish than to give him a fish, Steven Ochieng’s community has been building boats. Each boat costs about £900 and is used by 10 men, each of whom supports up to 10 others. Many have been paid for by schools and individuals in the UK. One I saw was generously donated by my noble and gallant friend, Lord Guthrie. It has been named by the Turkanas as the “St Charles”. We should never despise such small-scale initiatives, which are often far more successful than grand plans. EF Schumacher was right to argue that we should.
and practise small-scale economic initiatives,
In conclusion, it is worth reminding ourselves of the targets that we committed ourselves to realising by 2015. We said that we would halve the proportion of people living on less than $1 a day; ensure that all children complete primary school; educate boys and girls equally; reduce the mortality rates among children under five by two-thirds; reduce the mortality rates by three-quarters; halt and begin to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other major diseases; halve
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7.41 pm
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, I much welcome this debate introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Alton. I particularly welcome the maiden speech that we will hear from my noble friend Lord Bates. I was born a Bates, so we have a certain link, although, I hasten to add, it is not a blood link. In three minutes, I shall touch on three aspects of the millennium development goals: first, malaria; secondly, maternal mortality; and, thirdly, the whole problem of the supply chain for medicines, particularly in Africa, which underlies all the rest of the millennium goals.
First, I am delighted that we have ended the high-level event on the MDGs at the mid-point to the 2015 deadline with the news that $3 billion will be spent on malaria, as well as $4.5 billion on education. I say that because more lives can be saved through the better application of the available healthcare and diagnostic tests to fight malaria, to which we give little attention. I am chairman of the Medicines for Malaria Venture, which is developing new malaria drugs. In the next few months, it will launch Coartem dispersible, which is cherry flavoured specially for children. I am particularly interested in making sure that the drugs reach the children, as that is one of the biggest problems that we face. To eradicate malaria we must scale up our efforts massively, including by developing new and better tools of diagnosis. That also touches on training, to which I shall turn in a moment.
The UK has made big commitments towards the MDGs and the £40 million to support the affordable medicines facility for malaria is extremely welcome. In addition, the commitment to increase malaria research and development funding to at least £5 million a year by 2010 and to provide 20 million of the 120 million bed nets that are needed is a good step forward, but I fear that much more needs to be done. In industry, we know that that must happen.
Under MDG 4, improving maternal health is vital. That also turns on better provision of primary healthcare. I hope that noble Lords will forgive me for mentioning my foundation, the Chalker Foundation for Africa, of which I am a patron. We sponsored a young Kenyan doctor, who is now working in Turkana, by paying for his education. We have a Ugandan doctor training in Poland. We are also funding basic level health workers. Finally, please will the department take action about the supply chain of medicines, which for Global Fund supplies, I am reliably informed, is being sent through the UN, whose supply chain expertise needs much improvement?
7.44 pm
The Lord Bishop of Liverpool: My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for initiating this debate. I declare an interest as a vice-president of Tearfund, an agency working with partners around the world that is hoping to achieve the millennium development goals. I am both encouraged and
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I congratulate the Government on the amendment that they accepted to the Climate Change Bill. Noble Lords may recall that the amendment said that the Committee on Climate Change now has to have concern for international social impacts. In other words, it has to have a concern for the poor. There is no earthly use in trying to achieve the millennium goals if, at the same time, we ruin people’s harvests and undermine their sustainable development.
As we know, the millennium development goals are interconnected. I wish to draw attention to the lack of progress in clean water and sanitation, which causes one in five deaths. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, referred to the World Health Organisation survey that stated that 40 per cent of healthcare services in the developing world are provided by the faith communities. It is frustrating that some international agencies, such as the United Nations and even the World Bank, do not fully recognise the role that the faith communities have to play. I should like to say a word from this Chamber to those faith communities and ask them to work together more closely so that they can maximise their own potential.
Eight years ago, when we heard the Governments around the world pledging themselves to the millennium development goals, we were all filled with hope. What better way to celebrate the birth of the one who helped the poor? But eight years on this is the issue: how do we deliver those goals and, more important, how do we hold Governments accountable for the promises that they make?
7.47 pm
Lord Jay of Ewelme: My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Alton, on initiating this debate. At a time when so much of our focus is on the billions of dollars at risk in the financial markets, it is good to remember those for whom $1 a day is wealth. I shall focus on the effect of conflict on vulnerability and poverty, and what we should do about it. In 12 countries, one child in every four will die before the age of five. Nine of those countries have recently experienced conflict, which is no coincidence. The vast majority of the victims of conflict are civilians, often women and children. Conflict destroys hospitals, schools, markets, families and lives. In sub-Saharan Africa, 13 million people are refugees in their own country and 3.5 million are refugees in someone else’s. Conflict makes the millennium development goals far harder to achieve.
There is a gap in our response to conflict. In the immediate aftermath of conflict, the humanitarian agencies provide essential help, but, after a while, the press caravans and the humanitarian agencies move on to the next conflict. It takes time—far too long—for the development agencies, bilateral and multilateral, such as the World Bank, to arrive to take their place. Meanwhile, millions of vulnerable people struggling to pick themselves up after conflict continue to suffer. We need to be far more imaginative in helping countries
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My plea to the Government is for DfID to do more itself and to use its undoubted influence with others to bridge that gap. My second plea is for the Government as a whole to do more by joining up those responsible for delivering the instruments of our foreign policy—the Foreign Office, the Ministry of Defence and the Department for International Development—to prevent conflict in the first place, and to do more to reaffirm and put into practice the UN-approved doctrine of the responsibility to protect, a doctrine which means, quite simply, that no leader has the right to make his people suffer and that the international community has the right to try to stop him if he does. By a more imaginative approach to preventing conflict and by doing more to help those trying to recover from it, we shall do much to help reach the millennium development goals.
7.50 pm
Lord Bates: My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to rise for the first time in your Lordships’ House to make my maiden speech, and to make it on such an important issue. What we are talking about are the preventable deaths of some 10 million children under the age of five each year which, as the noble Lord said, puts the other matters we are debating at this time into some perspective.
It is a particular privilege and honour to speak in a debate initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, who was a role model as a parliamentarian and constituency Member of Parliament when we served together in the other place, and who will continue to be a role model in this place as well. I want also to put on the record my thanks to and deep appreciation of the officials and staff of your Lordships’ House. They have helped me when sometimes I have wandered bewildered around the corridors, and I want to pay particular tribute to those hardy souls on the parliamentary IT Help Desk who deserve special recognition. Someone asked me what I thought was the principal difference I have noticed between the other place and here. I said that the great difference is that when the Whips’ Office calls and offers to help you, over here they really mean it, and that is very welcome.
Turning to the substance of the debate, I have only one focus which follows on from the previous speaker, and that is on conflict as a cause of poverty. As we have been reminded, of the 30 current conflicts around the world, the vast majority are occurring in sub-Saharan Africa. They are responsible for drawing some 10 million children into the net of poverty and for the deaths of an estimated 2 million children over the past two years. Surely it behoves Her Majesty’s Government and all other agencies to move the issues of conflict resolution, of peace-keeping, and indeed where necessary, of peace-making, higher up the agenda. It follows that unless we are able to make advances in preventing war and initiating a war on war itself, the victory over child poverty that everyone seeks will not be achieved.
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