Africa (Poverty)     (30/06/05)

The Secretary of State for International Development (Hilary Benn): I am sure that the whole House will welcome the opportunity in the week before the G8 summit to discuss the great moral and practical challenge that our generation faces: eradicating poverty in Africa. I cannot not recall a time when poverty in Africa, its causes and what we can do about it were the subject of so much debate and public attention. The Make Poverty History campaign and its many supporters, and many hon. Members on both sides of the House, including members of the International Development Committee, the all-party group on Africa and the other all-party groups, deserve our heartfelt thanks for achieving that.

There is growing recognition that it is both our moral duty to help to change the condition of humankind, and in our self-interest to do so in an interdependent world. Many people will be in Edinburgh or at one of the Live 8 concerts this weekend because they want the G8 to act and believe that it is possible to do something. That is a message of hope, and it is certainly the best defence against cynicism, because if cynicism were ever to take hold in the fight against global poverty, we would be lost. It should also encourage us in our task. I wish to speak today about what needs to be done.

The facts about poverty in Africa are a reproach to every single one of us. Some 315 million people in sub-Saharan Africa—nearly half the population—live on less than a dollar a day. Some 40 million of its children are not today where they should be—in school. Some 250 million Africans do not have safe water to drink or proper sanitation and 6 million men, women and children died last year of entirely treatable diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. We can no longer claim that we do not know that that is happening. We understand what needs to be done, and there has never been a better time to act, because Africa itself is making progress and changing.

The establishment of the African Union, with its principle of non-indifference, has seen interventions in Darfur, Togo and the Central African Republic which frankly would have been unthinkable only a decade ago. There are fewer conflicts. Since 1999, peace agreements have brought to an end 10 of Africa's major wars. More leaders are being democratically elected. Governance is improving. Thanks to the New Partnership for Africa's Development, since 2003 23 African countries have agreed to have their economic, political, social and corporate governance critically reviewed through the Africa peer review mechanism. Last week, the first assessments on Ghana and Rwanda were discussed by African Heads of State. The leaders of those two countries will respond to the recommendations in the summer. I will place copies of the reports in the Library of the House as soon as they are available. We should commend Presidents Kufuor and Kagame for their openness and readiness to acknowledge the need for change.
 
We are also seeing action to combat corruption, most recently in Zambia and South Africa, and in Nigeria, where President Obasanjo is making a significant break with the past. More than $700 million of corrupt assets have been seized. Three Ministers and three judges have been sacked. One judge has been suspended. The Senate President has been forced to resign, and the inspector general of police has been arrested.

I am sure that the House will welcome the steps that are taking place in Nigeria—a country that suffered so grievously over the past generation, from corruption, bad governance and military dictatorship. I am also sure that the House will welcome the news of an agreement to deal with Nigeria's debt which was reached by the Paris Club yesterday. That is proof that reform brings benefits. Now is the time for all of us to support the reformers in Africa.

Mr. Andrew Robathan (Blaby) (Con): The right hon. Gentleman knows that I have a high respect for him, and we have discussed the issues once or twice before. When he says that there is moral challenge to us all, I agree with him. When he says that poverty reproaches each one of us, I agree with him. However, surely more than anyone it reproaches the other rulers who are not making progress—those in Zimbawe, who are not criticised by Mbeki in South Africa, and those across the continent of Africa, where next to no progress is being made, including, I regret to say, Ethiopia, whose Prime Minister was a member of the Commission for Africa.

Hilary Benn: I accept the hon. Gentleman's point and I shall come to those two countries directly because if we are going to do the right things to help, we have to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth about the condition of Africa.

We are also seeing economic progress. Average GDP growth in 2004 was the highest in eight years. Mozambique has cut poverty by a third in the past 15 years and has doubled the number of children in school. Uganda has cut poverty by half and reduced the incidence of HIV by two thirds. We all know, however, that progress is not seen everywhere across Africa. On current trends, the millennium development goals will not be reached for another 100, or in some cases 150, years. The people who need the progress that the goals represent will be dead by then. They cannot wait that long.

Africa suffers from a lack of capacity. Many countries simply do not have enough money to pay the salaries of doctors, nurses and teachers, or to buy the drugs that are needed to fight the AIDS pandemic that is killing so many people—2.5 million Africans died last year of AIDS—and threatens economic development. It is not just a human tragedy, but potentially an economic catastrophe.

Ethiopia, which has achieved great success in reducing poverty and getting more children into school, is involved in a terrible struggle, with loss of life and arrests as a result of its election process. The fact that there is no result to the Ethiopian elections should concern us all. Governments in Sudan and Zimbabwe have shown a shameful contempt for human rights, in one case killing their own citizens and in the other bulldozing families out of their homes. I applaud what the African Union has done in Sudan, and I very much regret its silence on Zimbabwe. I hope that that will change.

Mr. David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op): I thank my right hon. Friend on behalf of the associate parliamentary group for Sudan for addressing us so shortly after his return from Sudan. It is pleasing to see at one level what is beginning to happen via the AU in Darfur. However, the right hon. Gentleman will know that another tragedy is opening up in the east of the country, around Port Sudan. There has been rebel activity and, as before, the Government are overreacting. Will he talk to the Foreign Secretary to determine whether preventive action is needed now, so that we stop the tragedy of the north-south divide occurring again and ensure that there is not another scar on the face of Africa?

Hilary Benn: I will do that. My hon. Friend takes a close interest in Sudan. The conflict in the east and in Darfur demonstrates that although there is the north-south civil war, which has cost so many lives, in other parts of Sudan people want political participation and the chance to develop. The importance of the comprehensive peace agreement that was negotiated is that it provides the framework on wealth sharing and sharing political power, which offers the hope of finding a solution to the conflicts elsewhere in the country. In the end, it is up to the politicians to stop fighting, to start talking and to find that solution.

Although we rightly deplore what is happening in those countries where progress is not being made, they do not represent the whole of Africa. We cannot allow the actions of some Governments to jeopardise the future of the entire continent when African Governments elsewhere are increasingly demonstrating their commitment to change and when we can see the difference that aid makes.

The United Kingdom is helping to lead the debate on how aid can best be allocated. In the right circumstances, we should give our aid in a way that allows African Governments to decide how best to use it in line with their priorities to get children into school, to improve health care and to tackle poverty. In many countries, that means budget support. Where that is not possible, however, our aid will support sectoral programmes in health and education. We are also trying to improve predictability of aid—for example, by the 10-year agreements that we have reached with Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Tanzania. In every case, we assess the risk and put in appropriate safeguards against corruption. We are also working with countries to strengthen and improve their public financial management, because we have to be sure that we can demonstrate that the money reaches the poor.

We know that aid works. In Ghana, 15 years of aid to education has resulted in a 10 per cent. increase in enrolment and an increase from one third to four fifths in the number of primary school graduates who have acquired literacy skills.

Mrs. Nadine Dorries (Mid-Bedfordshire) (Con): The right hon. Gentleman talks of aid and includes Zambia as one of the countries that is making progress. The World Health Organisation predicts that by 2010 the average age of a Zambian will be 24. Twenty years ago the average age was 60. How can that be progress?

Hilary Benn: The reference to Zambia related to tackling corruption. It has an enormous AIDS problem. One reason why we need more aid, and debt cancellation, for countries like Zambia is so that they have the resources they need to buy the drugs and employ the doctors and the nurses to prevent the catastrophe that the hon. Lady rightly mentions. That is why we need to do more.

In Tanzania, budget support has increased the number of children in primary school from just over 4 million to 7 million in recent years. Nine out of 10 children now go to school. Uganda has used budget support to abolish health-user fees for primary health care. It has recruited an extra 3,000 trained health workers. Immunisation rates for children under five have risen from 40 to 80 per cent.

Aid works. That is why the Commission for Africa called for a doubling of aid from $25 billion to $50 billion by 2010. We know that without it Africa will not meet the millennium development goals. The commission was clear on that. We need that aid to improve infrastructure, to invest in people, education and health, to tackle AIDS and to create conditions for private sector investment. Above all, we need a big push now. The most powerful message for our debate today is that all of Africa's development challenges are linked, and that success will come about only if they are all addressed together.

The UK's contribution has involved leadership, and the Prime Minister's decision to set up the Africa Commission and to make Africa the heart of our G8 presidency. However, we are also giving practical help with a rising aid budget, and we have now set a timetable for achieving the 0.7 per cent. target by 2013. Europe's contribution will be particularly significant. The agreement that EU development Ministers reached just over a month ago will double Europe's development assistance between now and 2010, and will on its own deliver two thirds of the $25 billion a year additional aid to Africa that the Commission for Africa recommends. Canada has announced that it will double its aid to Africa by 2008, and Japan will do so by 2007. President Bush will make an announcement today about further contributions from the United States.

Mr. Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con): Will the Secretary of State do his utmost to ensure that the aid from the European Union starts to return to the poorest countries? He will be well aware that the EU's record of delivering aid to those countries is regrettable. It has never been good, but it has got worse in recent years.

Hilary Benn: I agree with the hon. Gentleman. The EU aid deal to which I referred represents the commitments of the 15 member states through their bilateral programmes. In addition, there is the European Community's development programme, and we and others are fighting to see more of that going to the world's poorest countries. I believe that there is support across the whole House for that.

Andrew George (St. Ives) (LD): The Secretary of State will have seen in The Times this morning that the International Monetary Fund has produced two reports that question the premise that aid makes a significant contribution to economic growth. What response will he and his Department make to the IMF in that regard?

Hilary Benn: The case for aid is not so much the difference it makes to economic growth but the difference it makes to saving people's lives and to getting children into school. Aid on its own will not deliver the economic growth that Africa requires if the continent is to be transformed. However, we should not let the IMF report dampen our commitment to increasing aid, because we can all see the benefit of so doing.

Mr. David S. Borrow (South Ribble) (Lab): Over the next few weeks, a lot of promises will be made about aid for Africa, and we need to ensure that those promises are kept. We must ensure that the aid that is promised by countries across the world materialises in the years to come. There are too many of examples of that not happening; bold promises have been made, and poor people have lost out because they have not been kept.

Hilary Benn: I could not agree more. The best people to hold to account the Governments who make those commitments are the Parliaments and the electorates of those countries, and the more loudly people express their concern about development and their anger about poverty, the better chance we have of ensuring that those commitments are turned into cash and practical help.

The other big step forward that we have seen is the agreement on debt cancellation, negotiated with such skill by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It potentially involves $55 billion-worth of debt cancellation, so that developing countries—many of which are in Africa—will no longer be faced with the terrible choice between making monthly repayments that they cannot afford and using the money to buy AIDS drugs and to employ the doctors, nurses and teachers who will make a difference to so many people's lives.

Aid and debt relief will help, but, as the hon. Member for St. Ives (Andrew George) said, Africa will not meet the millennium development goals without faster economic growth. We want to see African economies and their share of world trade double in the next few years, which means increasing their opportunities to participate in the global trading system, investing in infrastructure and reducing the cost of transport. One of the most striking statistics among the many in the Africa Commission's report illustrates that, while it costs $1,500 to transport a car from Japan to Abidjan in west Africa, it costs $5,000 to move it on from Abidjan to Addis Ababa. The high cost of transport in Africa is one of the factors that gets in the way of economic growth and development.

Everyone in the Chamber knows that our greatest opportunity to enable Africa to break free from the chains of poverty will be at the World Trade Organisation talks in Hong Kong in December. Unless we do everything that needs to be done to allow Africa to trade on fairer terms with the rest of the world, we will deny it the best hope that it has of changing the lives of its people for the better.

My final point is about partnership, because, in the end, there has to be a commitment on both sides. I have spoken about the contribution that the richer world can make, but Africa, too, has a responsibility to provide peace, stability and good governance. One reason why we should have hope is precisely that in recent years Africa has demonstrated through NEPAD and the African Union its determination to live up to that responsibility.

A fortnight ago, I was in Rumbek, in southern Sudan, where one in four children die before they reach five years of age and three quarters of all adults cannot read. I do not think I have ever been to a place that has so little. It has been impoverished, brutalised and traumatised by Africa's longest-running civil war, which has claimed 2.5 million lives. I met a group of villagers who had walked from Khartoum to Rumbek, which had taken more than two months. I particularly remember talking to a young woman by the name of Josefina, who was 19, and her brother Stephen, who was 11. Their mother had abandoned them and they had walked to Rumbek with their fellow villagers. I asked Josefina whether Stephen went to school, and she said he did not. When I asked why, she told me that the only school in Rumbek charged fees, and she had no money to pay them. Only with the peace deal will Rumbek and southern Sudan have the chance of a better future. As part of our obligation, we are providing more than £100 million to Sudan this year, in addition to the support that we are giving to the peace mission in Darfur.

Only through peace and stability will southern Sudan have the chance of a better future. The situation there teaches us that, even with the doubling of aid, the cancellation of debt and the opportunity of fairer trade, if people continue to fight one another, there will be no development or progress. Sudan and other countries remind us of that challenge. That is why we are right to provide support to build African capacity and to undertake more peace support operations across the continent. That is also why we are right to put money into education, so that people like Stephen in southern Sudan can have the chance to go to school. That is why we are right to put in money to meet the financing gap in regard to the fight against HIV and AIDS, and why Britain will be hosting the replenishment conference for the global fund in September.

In the end, this is all about one thing. It is about building capacity, without which Africa will not be able to tap its potential. Its countries need good governance, an independent judiciary, a lively civil society, and civil servants with skills. They need to fight corruption and to create a climate in which people from Africa and beyond will want to invest their money. In the end, capacity is about Governments who are able to deliver, and about people who have an expectation that their Government might be able to do something to improve their lives. I learned that lesson more forcefully than anywhere else on my first visit to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, when President Kabila told me that the challenge that his country faced was not to restore people's faith in the Government but to persuade them, for the very first time in their lives, that there might be something called a Government who had something to offer them. Above all, the future of Africa rightly lies in the hands of its people and their Governments.

There are many hon. Members in the Chamber today, and I look forward to hearing what they have to say. They will know that Africa is as full of potential, creativity, talent and hope as any other continent on the planet, and those qualities are waiting for the opportunity to be set free. We need to see Africa in all its complexity. If people continue to look at it as a continent only of war, pestilence, famine, disease and starvation, we will not see the real Africa underneath that is struggling to come up. In the end, it is the power of the political process in African countries and in the world that offers us the best hope of a better future. What is remarkable about the people who will gather in Scotland this weekend is that they look to the G8 and the political process to change things for the better.

Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP): Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Hilary Benn: If the hon. Gentleman will allow me, I shall conclude. Many Members want to speak, and I want to allow as much time as possible for them to do so.

People have demonstrated at some G8 summits because they do not want the G8 and do not like what it stands for—they want it to get out of town. We should draw enormous comfort from the fact that that is not the case this time. People hope that politics will demonstrate its capacity to change things for the better. It is, after all, how we as a country transformed ourselves over the past 400 or 500 years. Life expectancy used to be short, few people went to school, we did not have a health service and there was crushing, grinding poverty. If our forebears and ancestors came back, they would be astonished by the society that we have built for ourselves through a process of political, social and economic development. The people of Africa want exactly the same opportunity for themselves and their families so that they can build a better future and pass it on to the next generation. Our obligation is to do all that we have in our power to help them to bring about that better future.

Mr. Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con): A number of factors converge to focus the eyes of the world on Gleneagles next week. Britain holds the presidencies of the G8 and the European Union; we will have a strong voice at the World Trade Organisation talks in December; and it is the 20th anniversary of Live Aid. Thanks to a well organised and positive campaign, the public's desire to make poverty history has become an almost tangible force in the run-up to next week's summit. That presents the leaders of the eight most powerful nations with a great opportunity but also with a great challenge.

Next week in Edinburgh, it is not only the heads of African Government who will be held to account but the leaders of the richest, most powerful countries in the west, as the public are keen to see their spirit of compassion and good will reflected in the actions of their leaders. They are watching to see that in this year of opportunity politicians live up to the task, so that generosity is matched by the determination to ensure that every penny released for development is spent properly. Good intentions must be translated into effective results on the ground. Next week, the G8 leaders must channel the tremendous good will over the past few months into effective action for the world's poor. If they do not do so, they will fail the 30,000 African children who die unnecessarily every day, and they will fail the people of their own nations who demand real and effective action.

Accountability is the key, and that is what the Opposition will push for. The Conservative party fully welcomes the current political landscape of consensus on development issues. As the Secretary of State knows, we stand foursquare behind him on the Government's push for a comprehensive deal on aid, trade and debt. I am delighted by the emergence of a united British agenda on international development. I pay tribute to my predecessors, including my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (John Bercow), who is in the Chamber today, as they have worked hard to secure that unity of purpose. I am proud to have been appointed to my current post at a time of such opportunity. This is not a party political issue, and we will not seek to oppose for opposition's sake. However, the debate must be more than merely an exchange of pleasantries. While we commend the spirit of the Government's approach, the Opposition think that there are things missing from it. There is a serious danger that the Government will focus too much on headline figures and inputs, and not enough on ensuring that those inputs translate into concrete improvements in the lives of the poor. That would offer no solution to the people of Africa, and no satisfaction to the people of the G8 nations. On behalf of both those groups, we will hold the Government and their G8 counterparts to account.

Africa is the world's biggest continent. It consists of 51 countries with hugely diverse cultures and histories, where more than 1,000 languages are spoken. As the Secretary of State has just said, we should be wary of excessive generalisation when talking about Africa, but the countries of sub-Saharan Africa are, broadly speaking, united in poverty, which is acute, prolonged and worsening. Africa is the only continent in the world to have grown poorer in the last generation. People around the world, particularly in India and China, are creating wealth and gradually escaping from poverty. Africa's share of world trade, however, has halved. Poverty is increasing and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham has said, life expectancy is falling.

Today, like yesterday and tomorrow, 8,000 people in Africa will die from HIV/AIDS, 7,000 people will die of hunger, and 6,000 will die from water-borne diseases—90 per cent. of malaria cases are in sub-Saharan Africa. At least 25 million people are HIV-positive, and 12 million children have lost one or both of their parents to AIDS—12 million is more than the number of children in Britain. A total of 100 million children are missing out on school. Their school fees—I learned in Uganda that they are often less than £5 a term—are too expensive for their parents to meet. Denied an education, they are condemned at birth to a life of failure, their intellectual growth stunted just as the growth of their nation is stunted by poverty, and their talent is wasted forever.

Africa's children are like our children—they laugh the same, play the same, and suffer the same. In South Africa, people spend more on burying their dead than they do on food and clothing for their families. In the global village, we cannot ignore such suffering. In the face of that situation, it is truly appropriate that the question that will dominate the G8 meeting next week is what politicians in rich countries should do to reduce poverty and promote development in poor countries. For the millions of AIDS orphans and for all those children not in school there is no more important question. There are, however, no easy answers. Africa needs much more than good intentions. It needs co-ordinated, focused and effective assistance from the developed world and good policy from its national governments—a partnership, as the Secretary of State said.

I deliberately stress the need for good policy from African Governments. Bad Governments pursuing bad policies are the major reason why Africa is poorer today than it was 50 years ago. If the G8 countries are serious about helping Africa, they must face that unpleasant fact, and use their diplomatic and financial influence to create incentives for African governments to govern well. They must be unflinching in their condemnation of those Governments who perpetuate poverty and wage war on their own people. The title of our debate is "Helping Africa to fight poverty", and ultimately it is the responsibility of African governments and the African people to fight poverty.

Our actions should be enabling. They may help to create the necessary conditions for progress in Africa, but they are not sufficient in themselves. Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General has said that

"the struggle for development has to be carried on mainly in developing countries and by their people."

We must not use  bad governance as an excuse to turn our back on those 12 million AIDS orphans. There is much that the G8 leaders can, and must, do to assist those African governments who are genuinely committed to helping their people escape poverty.

First, we want to see a big increase in the quality and volume of aid. I welcome the consensus in British politics on the UN's 0.7 per cent target. As well as increasing the amount of aid that we deliver, we must secure international agreement to achieve a dramatic improvement in the quality of aid. We should be candid about the record of aid in the past. Some aid has been spectacularly successful. It supported the eradication of smallpox, for example, saving millions of children from a painful death. In Kampala 10 days ago I saw how British aid is helping to support 140,000 families affected by HIV/AIDS. I met people who are alive today because of British generosity. I visited the Kitovu hospital run by the CAFOD-sponsored Medical Missionaries of Mercy. Everyone in that hospital was working together to save lives with limited resources. I pay tribute to the work of those amazing people at that hospital and to all those who volunteer. They show us what can be achieved.
 
I want all our aid to be that effective, yet much aid in the past has been wasted, ending up in Swiss bank accounts or the pockets of arms dealers. Too often, aid has been characterised as a transfer of money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries. No part of the planet has received more aid and done less with it than Africa. We will secure public support for increased aid only if we take decisive action to prevent that from happening again. The public are sceptical. A poll for The Daily Telegraph has shown that 83 per cent. of people are not confident that money given by the west would be spent wisely. It also shows that 79 per cent. of voters believe that corruption and incompetence are to blame for Africa's problems.

After the summer, when the G8 conference is packed away, our electorates, the people of the developed world, will look to their leaders to ensure that the vast amount of money raised is spent properly. We must outline clearly how the money is to be spent, and we must put in place clear, transparent structures to account for the money. The G8 leaders must be able to monitor precisely where our money goes. I hope the Secretary of State will look carefully at structural ways of ensuring greater transparency and accountability in the way aid moneys are spent. Our taxpayers will demand nothing less.

Our aid should help to support efforts to develop the institutional and legal preconditions for growth and sustainable poverty reduction. It should be used to reward and encourage countries which establish a framework of transparent institutions, which respect the rule of law and human and property rights, and which promote free trade between individuals and between nations. Where we work with Governments, we must expect them to be fully and openly accountable for the funds that they receive. There should be no more second chances for tyrants and no more benefit of the doubt for corrupt dictators.

In badly governed countries, we should distribute aid through the small platoons of motivated, dedicated NGOs which are already doing such good work in the developing world. Such money should be disbursed through the Department for International Development, which is focused on output, rather than through the inefficient European Union.

We face huge challenges and we have only limited resources, so it is vital that we spend our aid where it will do the most good. That means supporting specific, effective, accountable investments in vaccine research and the provision of basis health and education services. We should draw up a priority list and stick to it. The Copenhagen consensus priorities of tackling HIV/AIDS, malnutrition and malaria are a good place to start.

We need to conduct a rigorous investigation into the merits of direct budget support, as opposed to project aid. Clearly, both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages, but the British people will rightly be sceptical about giving their hard-earned money to Governments who are not fully accountable and transparent.

Mr. Drew: Will the hon. Gentleman include TB in his list? TB, unfortunately, is the great killer in Africa that is often overlooked. Together with my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty), I had a meeting last week with Dr. Felix Salaniponi, who is the director of the national TB control programme in Malawi. He made it clear to us that TB can be eradicated but it must not be left out of the equation with malaria and HIV/AIDS. Does the hon. Gentleman agree?

Mr. Mitchell: The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. TB is of course coterminous with AIDS, and he makes his own point correctly.

The Department for International Development has earmarked £45 million for direct budget support to Malawi in the period 2003–06, despite the fact that the Department acknowledges that the country has

"weak economic and financial management".

Can the Secretary of State assure us that the money will be well spent? In Uganda, 50 per cent. of the budget comes from aid. What impact does that have on the behaviour of the Ugandan Government? Does it undermine their accountability to the Ugandan people?

I turn to the proposed international finance facility. That is a very clever way of front-end loading aid funding, but many questions remain unanswered. How exactly will the extra money be spent? How will we avoid the risk of a dramatic reduction in aid levels after 2015? What guarantees can be given that our aid will indeed be more effective if spent sooner rather than later? If the limiting factor is absorptive capacity on the ground, there is a real risk that aid could be subject to significantly diminishing marginal returns.

The international finance facility for immunisation is a very good idea indeed. Vaccinating children against disease is surely one of the most effective ways to spend our money. Children's lives can be saved for just a few pennies. In the 20th century we eradicated smallpox from the planet and we made great progress on polio. In the 21st century why can we not eradicate malaria from the planet, or even HIV/AIDS? In the face of diseases that cause such suffering, we cannot set our sights too high. One of the major priorities for the extra resources released at the G8 should be preventive health care and the provision of safe drinking water and adequate sanitation. We must ensure that all the money raised by the main IFF is used as productively as that. Furthermore, the immoral and unethical poaching of doctors and health workers from the third world to work in our country—health workers who are desperately needed back in their own communities—should be ended immediately.

I come now to debt relief. The last Conservative Government led the world in providing debt relief for poor countries. We welcome the progress that has been made on bilateral debt relief and will urge other countries to follow Britain's lead. We welcome the recent deal on multilateral debt. Well managed debt relief has produced many success stories. Mozambique's debt relief has enabled its Government to immunise 500,000 children. Benin eliminated school fees in rural areas, allowing thousands of children to attend classes for the first time. That is what debt relief can and must achieve, but we need to ensure that all the money freed up in this way is spent on fighting disease and educating children. We must put in place robust measures to ensure that the money released by debt cancellation is used to fight poverty. We must match generosity with practicality, acting to ensure that the money released by debt relief is put to good use.

The most effective way of helping African countries to develop is to free up markets for their trade. Although trade policy is a matter to be decided formally at the EU and the World Trade Organisation, it is right that trade measures to help the developing world are very much on the political agenda at the G8. I reiterate our position. Protection for developed countries at the expense of the developing world is both immoral and hypocritical. It must come to an end. For every pound that rich countries give to poor countries in aid, those countries lose £2 through our protectionist trade barriers. Over the past four years, £20 billion has been spent by the EU on agricultural export subsidies to Africa. That is a waste of European taxpayers' money and a direct cause of African impoverishment.

I am horrified by the French attitude to the reform of the CAP.

Mr. Laurence Robertson: My hon. Friend will be aware that 20 years ago, when Live Aid started, half the entire EU budget was spent on storing and disposing of surpluses, at a time when people in the world were starving. Is it not a tragedy that 20 years on, we do not seem to have moved very far?

Mr. Mitchell: My hon. Friend lays before the House a most important point.

The common agricultural policy hurts British taxpayers and consumers and is detrimental to the interests of poor countries. It encourages overproduction, distorts prices, imposes high tariffs on imports and subsidises exports. The Government must not let French intransigence prevent them from pushing for reforms of the CAP which will benefit the poor. We will press the EU to reduce agricultural tariffs and to end export subsidies. My right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin) is saying a number of interesting things today about the reform of the CAP. I hope the Government will want to take up his sensible agenda.

The dumping of state-subsidised produce on poorer countries is an abuse of the market. America should be taken to task for its outrageous cotton subsidies, which impoverish the people of Africa. What steps are the Government taking to equip poor countries to take full advantage of the opportunities offered by the multilateral trading system overseen by the WTO? Does the Secretary of State agree that a lack of the necessary expertise all too often prevents poor countries from taking full advantage of the system? What further consideration has he given to our proposal to create an advocacy fund to help poor countries fight their corner in international negotiations and to ensure that they are not outgunned in trade disputes? He will want to consider the important points made by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition at yesterday's Prime Minister's questions.

The experience of Africa since independence has not been one of undifferentiated failure, and there are beacons of hope and cradles of development from which the rest of the continent can learn. For example, Botswana has had the fastest growth in income per person of any country in the world during the past 35 years. It is a stable, well governed country and a multi-party democracy, and the benefits of its considerable diamond wealth have been spread fairly widely. According to Transparency International, Botswana is the least corrupt country in Africa, and its Government have taken a firm stand against corruption. When I visited Botswana last year, I was impressed by the anti-corruption posters on every street corner. Of course, the problem for Botswana is that all this is threatened by an HIV-prevalence rate of 30 per cent.

Let us be honest—the people of Africa have suffered from some of the worst Governments in the world. It is polite to refer to that point as "the governance issue", but the euphemism betrays those Africans who encounter police as a uniformed protection racket, customs officers not as people who protect their children from drugs but as extortionists who have bought their posts and need to make them pay, or judges not as neutral administrators of justice but as servants of the rich and powerful. To people from Darfur whose villages have been razed or to Zimbabweans whose homes have been burned, the word "governance" is a shameful, almost wilful, dodging of the issue, and the G8 leaders should act on that matter next week.

This Government have not always lived up to their rhetoric about crimes against humanity in Africa. As President Mugabe's repression gets worse, they still do nothing—meanwhile, China supplies him with arms. In the debate following the statement on the Commission for Africa, the Secretary of State said that he felt the people of Africa would hold their leaders to account through the democratic process. I hope that he will at least concede that things are not going entirely as he had hoped. African Governments have remained resolutely silent over the policies of state terrorism exercised by President Mugabe in Zimbabwe, except, of course, for President Mkapa of Tanzania, who is a member of the Commission for Africa and who earlier this year in a BBC interview praised his "brother" for his brave anti-colonial stance.

Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab): The hon. Gentleman has mentioned good governance in Africa and Zimbabwe. This morning, I visited some of the Zimbabwean hunger strikers in Harmsworth. What message does it send to the world about what this country thinks about Zimbabwe that we are prepared to allow 90 people to remain on hunger strike because we will not stop sending back people to that brutal dictator?

Mr. Mitchell: The hon. Lady is right, and I have made the point that more action should be taken.

I am not talking about white farmers, although their treatment has been appalling and unjust. I am talking about the estimated 250,000 black Zimbabwean citizens who have been brutally ejected from their homes, which have been destroyed, and left without shelter or sustenance because they were suspected of voting for the opposition in the last election. I am talking about the many millions more who are starving and dying in the country at large for belonging to the wrong tribe, for having the wrong political allegiance, or simply because they are the random victims of policies that have reduced a once-thriving country to penury. We were told that public criticism of Mugabe's regime by donor Governments would be counterproductive and that we should allow Mugabe's peers and neighbours to use quiet diplomacy and economic leverage to ameliorate his policies. From here, that quiet diplomacy looks far more like spineless consensual silence.

As for Ethiopia, which is run by another of the Prime Minister's friends, Meles Zenawi, the African Union, explaining its silence about the recent murder of more than 20 opposition supporters on the streets of Addis Ababa, said that it had more important issues to deal with.

Neither protestors, nor politicians, nor rock stars will be able single-handedly to make poverty history, which is a task that can be accomplished only by the efforts of African countries themselves. People, not Governments, create wealth, but there is much that our Government can do to make that task easier: we can champion and reward good government; we can give more aid and make sure that it is spent well; and we can allow people in poor countries to trade with people in rich countries without hindrance. However, the ultimate success or failure of the British presidency of the G8 will be judged not by inputs—the headline figures on aid or debt—but by outcomes. How many children will it save from an early death and how many poor countries will it enable to become more wealthy? We have a duty, both to people in developing countries and to the hard-working British taxpayer, to see that the money released for development in 2005 is well spent.

Good intentions and generous spending alone achieve nothing. If we are to make poverty history, we must match compassion with realism and generosity with practicality. Although we should recognise the crucial role of aid in reducing immediate human suffering, we should also remember that the only sure road out of poverty is wealth, spurred on by property rights and freedom under the rule of law. Reforming immoral, hypocritical and pernicious trade barriers and subsidies would do more to help sub-Saharan Africa than anything else.

We fully support the Prime Minister and the Government in their determination to act this year, but we will monitor them closely and hold them accountable for the hopes they have raised, both at home and in Africa. My signal to those marching to Edinburgh—many of us will be marching with you—is that we will not allow your expectations to be let down. Failure by the leaders of the G8 to seize this moment of opportunity would be a betrayal of their own citizens as much as of the poor, the sick and the destitute in Africa. The Government must not squander the emotional capital that they have earned, which is why we will support them in the noble aims and aspirations that they will champion at Gleneagles next week. I hope that they will draw strength from our determination and support and from the faith of those across the world who will be watching.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Michael Lord): Order. Before I call the next speaker, I remind hon. Members that the 10-minute limit on speeches by Back Benchers applies from now on.

Mr. Tom Clarke (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab): In opening the debate, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State welcomed the focus on these important issues—it is marvellous that people are writing and speaking about them, and on Saturday people will be marching about them, too.

On 7 June, I read a piece in The Guardian by Martin Kettle that made me feel angry. Having re-read the article, which was entitled, "The naive lead the naive in a campaign of liberal guilt", and having re-examined Martin Kettle's conclusion that

"Gleneagles . . . is about a generation's unfinished business",

I think that the article probably served a useful purpose by reflecting, along with the enthusiasm for making poverty history and for Saturday's march, the cynicism which undoubtedly exists in some quarters and which has even been reflected in today's short exchanges. As the hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr. Mitchell) has said, Africa has received more aid than any other continent, but has also repaid more debt and more debt interest than any other continent, and it has to deal with countries that pursue grotesque trade policies that clearly make impositions on the poorest people in Africa. We must address those matters in the modern world.

So what do we seek to do? We want to take on board what Make Poverty History is about and to address the issues of conflict. We are all deeply worried about Darfur, and we want to strengthen the international community and the United Nations in their response to that terrible and ongoing crisis. In our aid policies, we want to ensure that we deal with child care issues. In Africa, one woman in 14 is likely to die in childbirth as against one woman in 1,400 in Europe; that cannot be right. We want to address health care problems and people's need for food and medication. We want to tackle genuine development and to challenge the terrible scourge of HIV/AIDS, especially where we know that we have the opportunities to do it.

There is cynicism, and we might as well acknowledge that. It is perfectly fair to criticise what is going on in Zimbabwe, which is abominable, but it has to be set in the context of the problems of the whole of Africa. Some 12 million people live in Zimbabwe—1.6 per cent. of a total population of 817 million. The policies being pursued there are deplorable, but Zimbabwe is not Africa and Africa is not Zimbabwe. Transparency, on the part of donor nations and recipient nations, is absolutely essential. It is essential too in terms of partnership, because without that partnership we cannot achieve the millennium goals and objectives that most Members wish to achieve.

I am glad that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State gave a lead yesterday and today when he mentioned Kenya. He said that school fees had been abolished and that 1 million more children are at school, which is splendid, but he did not do it in a starry-eyed way. He pointed out that 40 million children in Africa are not where they should be—at their desks in the classroom. That, too, remains a challenge.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Down (Mr. McGrady) spoke about Ethiopia. He mentioned some people in his constituency who went there to help to build a little school, but had not been there for long when they realised that it could not be done. They found children starving and dying and children who were blind, and saw that food and medication were not getting there. They went back to Ireland to review their priorities and to address the problems that they had encountered.

It is not unreasonable to respond to the demands for transparency that have again been made in this debate—indeed, I support them. It is not unreasonable to say that there should be accountability in relation to the extraction of the huge mineral resources in Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and elsewhere. The companies that exploit those resources should be open and democratic, and the Governments who obtain them should be open not only with their own people but with public opinion in this country. I welcome the fact that our Government are taking that issue seriously.

I want to turn briefly, if I may, to the Bill that I hope to introduce for its Second Reading on 20 January; obviously I cannot refer to it in detail today.

John Bercow (Buckingham) (Con): Go on.

Mr. Clarke: That is despite the temptation of the hon. Member for Buckingham (John Bercow).

I believe that the Bill is highly relevant to this debate. If we achieve, as the International Development Committee is urging upon the Government, something like the Swedish model, then we will indeed be making progress. Under the Bill, not only would we expect and demand in this Parliament a report on how Governments achieve the target of 0.7 per cent. of gross national income—some do not have a particularly good record on that—but would look for the kind of transparency that Members on both sides of the House have demanded today, as well as a compact with recipient countries. We cannot instruct them about how they spend their money in absolute detail, but it is fair that we as a Parliament and the British people know how it is being spent.

We are right to aim for poverty reduction and to see as a huge priority the upholding of human rights and obligations, as well as strong financial management and action on the compelling issue of corruption. Today, we look forward to the events of the weekend. We also look forward to some other important gatherings—the G8 itself, the World Trade Organisation meeting in Hong Kong, and the millennium summit in New York later this year. They will not solve all the problems in themselves, but they are extremely important in making a practical contribution towards challenging the poverty and deprivation and the lack of opportunity and aspirations that we see in the continent of Africa.

In that spirit, I welcome the debate, the Government's policies, and the support that public opinion is giving to the continent of Africa because people recognise that it is a continent seeking to make progress in a world that is experiencing great disenchantment.

Andrew George (St. Ives) (LD): It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr. Clarke), and I entirely endorse his comments.

Although the 10-minute restriction on Back-Bench speeches does not apply to me, I will apply it to myself, for two reasons. First, I may not be able to remain in the Chamber until the end of the debate. I have explained why that is to the Secretary of State, to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and to the Conservatives, so I will not bore the House with it.

Secondly, I have never been to Africa myself. People might say that I am therefore not worthy to contribute to the debate, but I hope that they do not. One does not need to travel to a place in order to be able to express concern or to engage in a debate about it. A maxim that often trips off the tongue is that travel broadens the mind. Its most ardent advocates perhaps say it to salve their consciences about using disproportionate amounts of non-renewable resources as they travel the globe. Some people who travel all over the place come back with the same teeny-weeny little mind that they went off with in the first place. I do not argue that travel does not broaden the mind, but I would say that if one starts with a broad mind, there is a great deal to gain from travelling. I hope that I can prove that, as I will be putting the matter right with regard to Africa in the very near future.

As we could have anticipated, so far the debate has been consensual. I could sign my name to the speech by the Secretary of State and to most of the speech by the hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr. Mitchell), who speaks for the Conservatives. I hope that they might be able to do the same to mine when I shortly reach the end of it; we shall see.

I congratulate the Government on their leadership through the Commission for Africa. They are raising expectations with regard to the G8 summit. Politically, that is a dangerous thing for any politician to do. They have done it, however, in a responsible way. The Chancellor's lead on debt relief is also welcome. We can therefore take pride, across parties, in the Government taking a lead in the world on those issues. Challenges still exist, however, which we want to probe and encourage the Government to address.

The hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew), who takes a strong interest in such matters, mentioned the national TB control programme in Malawi, and I have also met Professor Salaniponi. The Department for International Development is providing welcome assistance and aid to that programme, supplementing the salaries of medical workers in Malawi, to ensure that they are not poached—at least we hope that they will not leave the country to work elsewhere, as they are essential to the success of that programme. The funding comes to an end, however, at the end of this calendar year. I know, however, that one of the challenges that the Department must face is the exit strategy.

David T.C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con): Will the hon. Gentleman join me in acknowledging the enormous damage done to countries such as Malawi when large numbers of nurses leave? I believe that more are now working in Britain than in Malawi, and we must be careful to ensure that the third-world countries from which we recruit can afford to lose those people. There are many nurses from the Philippines in my constituency, for example, but that is not a problem because that country has a surplus of nurses. We should not recruit nurses or teachers from South Africa, however, when that shortage causes huge problems for the countries concerned.

Andrew George: I endorse the hon. Gentleman's sentiments. The Minister will no doubt address such issues, and the question of what the Government are doing, in his response. Certainly, supplementing the salaries of medical workers in Malawi makes a contribution, and we need to do a great deal more. Sophisticated activity might be needed to enable such workers to remain in their home country, whether they be teachers, medical workers or others.

The timing of this debate is related to the G8 summit in Gleneagles next week and the Live 8 marches and concerts at the weekend. I will also be in Edinburgh this weekend, and look forward to meeting the Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield and other parliamentarians to ensure that the messages get across. When one of the primary issues of the G8 summit is the eradication of poverty, however, I am concerned that that debate is among the eight richest countries in the world. In effect, the poorest countries can wait to hear what benefits come from the top table after the event. When countries that are not present are being discussed, the same principle should apply that applies to the disability community—one should never discuss others without them being present. The G8 should also have what I have described as the P8—the poorest eight—present so that they can look them in the eye, negotiate with them and understand exactly the consequences of their decisions.

In one of the most impassioned contributions to the debate, the Secretary of State described those in the wealthy west as having a moral duty. He described his recent experience of visiting Sudan. I hope—I know that the hon. Member for Buckingham (John Bercow), who has also spoken passionately on this issue, agrees—that the Government and the G8 will consider ways of building the capacity of the African Union and the United Nations as a means of recognising that conflict resolution might mean international intervention, from which we have held back too often in the past.

I asked the Secretary of State earlier about his response to the International Monetary Fund reports and the premise that aid results in economic growth. I have never believed or argued that aid programmes are necessarily intended to result in economic growth, and I was encouraged by his response that aid is about saving people's lives. We hope that trade and other mechanisms result more directly in the capacity for economic growth.

As further background, the Secretary of State mentioned, as reported on the front page of The Times, President's Bush's announcement that he intends to increase the US contribution to aid to Africa in three programme areas, on the condition that African Governments put their house in order. Of course we talk about governance, but it is wrong for us in the west to hector African Governments as we often end up doing. I hope that President Bush will put his house in order with regard to his trade rules.

Mr. Jim Cunningham (Coventry, South) (Lab): I have listened with great interest to the hon. Gentleman, but how does he think that we can get good government in Africa? I have not heard him explain that.

Andrew George: That is a big question to answer within the time restriction that I have given myself. Perhaps I will be allowed injury time.

Mr. Andrew Mitchell: I strongly disagree with the hon. Gentleman's contention that we should not hector the Governments of Africa. Where we think that they are letting down the people whom they are there to govern and lead, we should express ourselves in the strongest possible way, which I tried to do in relation to the Government of Zimbabwe.

Andrew George: Perhaps I did not express myself clearly enough. Of course we should express ourselves clearly when we disagree, but my point is that President Bush should also recognise that he should put his house in order with regard to trade rules. The US is dumping cotton on poor countries, which is having a detrimental impact and undermining the intention to improve poverty eradication in those countries.

Pete Wishart: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there is a real distinction between good governance and corruption? Western Governments are imposing their political will on developing African nations, particularly on issues such as liberalisation of markets and insisting on privatisations.

Andrew George: I understand that the hon. Gentleman intends to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and he will have an opportunity to expand on those points.

The message that I hope that we can send to those at the Live 8 concerts and protests this weekend is that it is not an opportunity for momentary compassion for the poorest in Africa, but that it can be sustained. I hope that the Government will also be encouraging and look for opportunities in which that compassion and concern, expressed by millions of people in this country, can be expressed in practical application. One of the first things that can be done by those who are joining hands around Edinburgh or attending the Hyde park concert is to ask, the next time that they go to their large local grocery store, whether it can provide reassurance that their purchases will not damage the ethical standards for which they have just been campaigning, and will not harm the poorest people in African countries whom they have just attended a concert to support.

Mr. Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con): Will the hon. Gentleman educate the House as to who would actually answer that question if it were asked in my local Tesco or Sainsbury's?

Andrew George: There are campaigning non-governmental organisations engaged in a dialogue with the larger supermarkets, and they are raising questions about ethical standards. We want to encourage supermarkets. We are talking about transparency in government, but we should also have transparency in the commercial sector in this country, so that we understand more about the source of our bananas, coffee and other products, so that what we buy does not undermine the benefits of the work being undertaken to eradicate poverty in less developed countries. I hope that the Government will use their good offices to ensure that greater transparency can be facilitated.

Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP): I thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to address the House for the first time, in this important debate. I thank not just the Government for this timely debate, but the Secretary of State, not just for his contribution to the debate but for the immense efforts and determined initiative that the Government have shown on this issue—not just in the run-up to the G8 and the creation of the Commission for Africa, but dating right back to the creation of the Department for International Development and the policy reloading that that brought.

I stand here proud to uphold the values of the Social Democratic and Labour party—a party of consistency and persistence, as we have stood for non-violence, democracy and partnership as a better way to a better Ireland; and a party that is solidly social democratic, unashamedly Irish nationalist, but determinedly internationalist.

Of course I am conscious that I am more than an SDLP MP. I stand here democratically honoured to represent the interests of all the people of Foyle—whether they voted for me or for other parties' candidates, and whether they share my political beliefs or hold other views, different from mine but no less legitimate for that.

I also know my duty not just to speak up for my party or stand up for my constituents, but also to look out for the needs and rights of other citizens of this world. So it is in this debate on addressing poverty in Africa that I make my maiden speech. This carries some continuity from my predecessor, John Hume, whose last Prime Minister's question, earlier this year, was on this very same crucial issue.

The shadow Secretary of State mentioned that we are 20 years on from Live Aid—and 20 years ago this month, along with John Hume, I went on to a boat in the port of Derry, in my constituency, and met six stowaways from Ethiopia—refugees. Within days, the Home Office gave three of them refugee status and three exceptional leave to remain. Twenty years on, as we go towards Live8 and we face new African issues, we have to ask what prospects those people would face if they arrived now—just as the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) raised questions about what we are doing with refugees from Zimbabwe now.

This debate will be full of echoes of the challenging things that Bono, among others, has said to us all about Africa. I agree with them all, just as I applauded Bono for hailing John Hume as a hero, and Seamus Mallon as a giant of Irish politics. There might be spin games in Northern Ireland about who won the war and speculation about who will win the peace, but there can be no doubt about who won the argument. With John the architect and Seamus the engineer, the SDLP provided the blueprint and the construct of the Good Friday agreement.

The key precepts of that agreement were first spelled out in a 1972 SDLP paper, "Towards a New Ireland", which was in two parts, one offering the political argument and the other an institutional model. It will surprise no one in the House to hear that John Hume was the primary author of the rationale, but it may surprise Members to hear that a major contributor to the model outline was Kadar Asmal—then a law lecturer in Dublin and head of the Irish anti-apartheid movement. Since then, of course, he has been Minister for Water, and more recently Minister for Education, in a democratic South Africa.

In getting his ideals to prevail, John Hume led our community from grievance to governance. In a different context, with hugely different challenges, the African National Congress led their people from grievance to governance. In the debate on Make Poverty History, some people raise questions of governance almost as a dismissive counterpoint to the demand for debt relief, proper aid and fair trade. But there can be no sustainable solution to the governance questions in Africa without radical and durable resolution of Africa's grievances. Wrong as they have been, it is not the bad behaviour or poor performance of some African regimes that created the inequities and iniquities of the world economic order that handicap that continent.

In no way can the challenges facing Northern Ireland be equated with the mass suffering that afflicts so much of Africa. My own constituency of Foyle suffered death and destruction in the Troubles, and has endured structural neglect and under-investment for decades. It shows up in the league tables as having the highest unemployment, the worst rates of long-term unemployment and high rates of economic inactivity, and many of its wards are among those with the highest concentrations of multiple deprivation, including child poverty and fuel poverty. I will be returning to those and related issues in future debates, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

But there is another league table that Derry consistently tops—that for popular giving to support development aid and combat poverty in Africa and other developing countries. I believe that that stems from a spirit not just of charity but of solidarity. Derry is more forward-looking and outward-looking than many people know, as is evidenced in the great work of so many schools, Churches and other groups in the Make Poverty History campaign and for other causes.

Derry should not just be defined by the sort of stark indicators that I mentioned earlier, without also being described by its tradition of self-help, its pathfinding partnerships, its cultural offering, its working aspiration to be a "city of learning", and the enterprise shown even against difficult odds. So I know too that although all Africans want us to focus properly on the ills of poverty, disease, hunger, child mortality and lack of education and health services, they also want us to recognise their good endeavours, their initiative, their cultural vibrancy, their talents and their ambitions. They want us to recognise their efforts to grow out of poverty, to invest properly, to foster enterprise and deliver community-based development, to combat disease, to provide safe water, to keep children alive to school age and then to guarantee them a school.

It is when we see both what Africans are offering, as well as what Africans are suffering that we get a fuller sense of the compound injustice of their position. We cannot see corruption in African Governments and be blind to the corruption of an international economic order that locks people in poverty and stunts democracy, while mouthing "private enterprise" and "good governance" as a modern version of "Let them eat cake". We cannot preach property rights while we deny production rights.

The Make Poverty History campaign has three demands—debt relief, more and better aid, and trade justice. Debt relief is not just about writing off African mistakes. It is about righting a world wrong. Debt relief means allowing Africa to focus more of its own spending on its own potential, its own needs, rather than on liabilities that it should not owe anyone. It will release important margins of African countries' gross national product for investment in vital services such as health and education. It should mean that the benefits of economic growth allow more Africans to make a living, rather than allowing banks and institutions to make a killing.

I welcome the debt relief package for the poorest countries, brokered by the Chancellor with his G8 colleagues. Its value should not be underestimated, nor should it be overestimated. We need to recognise that many poor peoples in regions of hardship will not benefit directly. We also need to realise that funding debt relief from aid budgets can be seen as robbing Peter to pay Peter. More remains to be done. I believe that the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for International Development will try to get more and better, through, for instance, sponsorship of the international finance facility.

The second demand is for aid levels to rise to 0.7 per cent. of GNP. That target was set and promised as long ago as 1970, and has been set again many times by many countries. We now have the solemn commitments of the millennium development goals, which are not just about overall aid levels but about very specific outcomes in education, health, housing, safe water and so forth.

Judged on our record, our promises mean little or nothing. We are hardly in a position to preach to Africa about performance and delivery standards from Government. New promises on aid are overdue, but still under-reliable. Such commitments should be absolute and should do exactly what it says on the tin, with no more evasions consisting of micro-statistical comparisons with what others are not doing, or attempts to include popular donations to aid agencies. That applies not just to the G8 but to all countries, not least EU countries and particularly—for me—Ireland. I entirely back the case for targeting and tracking increased aid, but that proper priority should not be an excuse for our lack of urgency and diligence in living up to earlier promises.

The third plank is trade justice: allowing people a fair price for what they produce, allowing African countries to add value to what they produce, and allowing them to grow their way out of poverty. It must involve ending the travesty of their having to scale the high dam gates of protection tariffs around us when they struggle to avoid drowning as we flood their markets by dump-pouring goods below world prices.

While there are some critics of the case for debt relief and aid, none of us parliamentarians are being actively lobbied against them. That will not be the case when it comes to some of the issues in the world trade round building up to December. Interests in or near our constituencies will bring us legitimate concerns, as businesses or unions. Organised interests will lobby us on the implications and complications of trade round choices. In that confusion and concern, and after the hype of Gleneagles, we must not be tempted to fall for the Meatloaf standard that "two out of three ain't bad".

We must not decide that trade justice can wait while we let better aid and debt relief work. Africa needs justice now—not two thirds of justice, but all of it.

Mr. Andrew Mackay (Bracknell) (Con): It is a huge privilege to follow the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan). Nearly everyone in the House was delighted when he won a very difficult election in his constituency last month. He is a courageous politician who has had a distinguished career in Northern Ireland, most recently in the Executive and the Assembly. It was typical of him that his speech was not just about the Province, but was an international speech in a significant international debate. He also used the opportunity to point out, rightly, that the city he represents and loves, Derry, is a big city with a big heart, which looks outwards as he did. I hope that he will ably represent his constituency for many years to come.

This has been a significant debate in another respect. In my experience, there have not been many occasions on which we have heard two such fine speeches from the Front Benches. The Secretary of State is respected in all parts of the House for his huge enthusiasm but also for his hardnosed realism, matched with a rare eloquence. We have high hopes that he will continue his good work throughout this Parliament. I hope that the Prime Minister, or his successor, will not be so unwise as to move him in a reshuffle, because we need him in his Department for the entire Parliament.

I am delighted that my hon. and very good Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr. Mitchell) is the shadow Secretary of State. He has the eloquence but also the financial expertise to make a large contribution. I think that the two of them will work very closely together.

There are plenty of opportunities in the House for us to have rigorous debates, to play the party-political game, to score points and also, perhaps, to thoroughly enjoy ourselves. Increasingly, however, I have noticed that that is a thing of the past in the context of international development, and the speeches we have heard so far have illustrated that very well.

Having said all that, I hope that the Secretary of State will forgive me if I draw attention to areas of concern as well as areas of consensus, as he rightly said that he wanted to listen carefully to the whole debate.

It is taken as read, as hon. Member for Foyle rightly pointed out a few moments ago, that there are many aspects to this debate. It is essential that more funds be made available for Africa—that is agreed—but it is also essential that that money be well spent. The hon. Gentleman was also correct when he said there is no point in trying to create an enterprise culture if the first bricks are not in place. The first bricks have to be education and health, but they also have to include good governance. There also has to be a level playing field.

I have criticised before our American allies and our European partners, who are the two principal culprits. My hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield rightly criticised the common agricultural policy, which we have to work to change. It is not just overburdening our contribution to the EU and its budget, which is bad enough; what it is really doing is ruining farmers across the third world, but particularly in Africa. We have to put great pressure on President Bush and on Congress every time that we meet American politicians. We have to point out the harm that their food subsidies are doing to Africa. This American Administration rightly see the problems in Africa. They are being financially very generous, but most of that will be largely wasted if they do not reform their own subsidies.

Most of all, we have to continue to fight against corruption, bad government and abuse of human rights in Africa. The right hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr. Clarke), who is a considerable expert in this field, chided us by saying that Zimbabwe is not Africa. To that degree he is right, and the Secretary of State pointed out the many success stories, but the Secretary of State also rightly pointed out the failures. I hope that the right hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill will bear with me if I spend most of the remaining few minutes of my speech talking about Zimbabwe, not least because his Government and the Leader of the House have not behaved well in failing to get a Minister to make a statement at the Dispatch Box on Zimbabwe, particularly bearing in mind the outrageous acts of the Mugabe regime, which has demolished so many houses for political purposes and abused human rights. I have no facility to express my concerns other than that which attaches to this debate.

Although the Secretary of State was right to say that wherever possible, our aid should go direct to Governments in Africa—democratically elected, one hopes—who can then choose how best to spend that money, that clearly cannot be so in Zimbabwe. He and I had an exchange on this issue during questions yesterday, and I hope that when the Under-Secretary winds up, he will further confirm that where doubt exists—there is no doubt in Zimbabwe: it is a clear-cut case—and there is fear of corruption and the abuse of human rights, we will concentrate more on the non-governmental organisations and less on giving money to the Government in question. Only when we are satisfied that there is good governance and a lack of corruption can the money go to that Government. That is very important indeed.

It is tragic that we have not intervened—I do not mean militarily—to put greater pressure on Zimbabwe, and that we have allowed Mugabe to abuse his people. We have to ask ourselves why, when action is taken against wrongdoing regimes in the Balkans, the middle east and Afghanistan, it has not been taken in Zimbabwe. It is so condescending to African people to say, "Oh, it's different. We don't want to upset Africa. We have to do things gently." Initially, I accepted that the situation should be dealt with through the African Union, of which I am a big supporter. As the Secretary of State pointed out earlier, the African Union has done some good, particularly in the Sudan, the Congo and the Central African Republic. In Zimbabwe, however, its record has been disgraceful—as has, I am afraid, the record of President Mbeki. I am great supporter of what has happened in South Africa: the transformation since apartheid has been quite remarkable and the reconciliation achieved has been deeply significant. Yet there remains a complete blind spot over Zimbabwe. When we see the President of Tanzania positively applauding what is happening in Zimbabwe, it sends a shiver down one's spine. My hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield mentioned that earlier.

We have to put greater pressure on our African friends to take action in Zimbabwe and we need more effective sanctions. It is possible to apply more effective and sharper sanctions and it is possible to take action against the deeply revolting business men in this country who are helping to fund the regime in Zimbabwe. We know who they are and we know where they live: it is time that enforcement officers in this country, perhaps emboldened by fresh legislation, took action against them.

I conclude by saying that I hope that all these issues are properly taken into account during this deeply significant week with the G8 meeting at Gleneagles. If we just throw money at the problem and do not resolve the other issues, the effort will largely be wasted, which would be a very great pity indeed.

Mr. Michael Meacher (Oldham, West and Royton) (Lab): I welcome my right hon. Friend's opening speech, which was excellent, spoken with passion and eloquence and, if I may say so, on the back of a good ministerial track record. I must however add that the congratulatory, nodding consensus across the Floor of the House on this subject is beginning to turn my stomach. I shall want to make some critical comments, but I believe that Gleneagles is a defining moment for this Government. There are a few rare occasions that expose the moral tenor of our times, and the Africa/climate change G8 may turn out, in the breadth of its positive vision, to be one of them. Given the sheer scale of what is being attempted and given that the British Government have been the prime impetus and driver behind the whole project, it must be said that if this can succeed, it will be one of the most important achievements—perhaps the most important achievement—of the Labour Government so far.

Securing international agreement on wiping out multilateral debt owed to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund for 18 of the world's poorest countries, relieving them immediately of £22 billion of debt—a sum that might well be increased to about £28 billion in the next 12 to 18 months with the inclusion of a further nine very poor countries—is unquestionably a huge achievement. The significance of the deal is that dirt-poor countries such as Mozambique, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Zambia, which are now obliged to spend more each year on servicing the debt by paying the interest than on their entire health or education budgets, will now at last have a chance to begin the fight to escape extreme poverty.

The United Nations Development Programme report of a few weeks ago projected that on current trends—that is, before the current deal—there would be 5 million deaths of babies and infants under five in Africa over the next decade. That figure will now be significantly cut as a result of the deal—though, of course, not by enough. I believe that the doubling of aid from $50 billion to about $100 billion a year is still needed in addition. Earlier in the debate, there was some question about the purpose of aid. I believe that its purpose is to build roads and infrastructure, and to put in place the health, education, training and other public services that are necessary for decent welfare and the economic take-off that the private sector will never provide on its own.

I know that President Bush is saying a bit more today, but the current US offer of $675 million is paltry compared with the extent of need. The US economy is worth $10 trillion; the US spends $400 billion every year on defence, but its aid budget is only 0.16 per cent. of GDP. It is the meanest of all the rich nations, but the Bush Administration are saying in effect that, for Africa, the US can afford an extra amount equal to only 0.08 per cent. of its annual defence budget. The Africa Commission states in its excellent report that that is just one ninth of the absolute minimum that is necessary. The trouble is that the US never took much interest in Africa—at least until the 1990s, when oil was discovered off the west coast.

Quite rightly, much has been made of corrupt governance in Africa, and that dreadful problem needs to be tackled. It is used as an excuse to withhold aid, but helpful precedents have been agreed by NEPAD and some African Governments that would allow aid expenditure to be monitored and audited by independent agencies. That is a step forward. Moreover, the oil and mining industries that are notorious for bribing Government officials are now subject to transparency guidelines. Again, though, those guidelines must have force and they must be statutory.

The corrupt Governments in Africa are bad, but they are not the only ones at fault. We must not be blind to the fact that western practices are also reprehensible in some respects. All too often, tied aid is used as a form of subsidy for commercial exports. In addition, the US in particular often directs aid as a means of helping military allies such as Israel, and not as a way of relieving poverty. The ActionAid report released last month stated that 40 per cent. of global aid goes on over-priced assistance from international consultants. I know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has challenged that, but the figure is certainly substantial. So when we hear members of the free-trade right scorn Africa's aid junkies, we must ask exactly who those aid junkies are, and who profits so handsomely from the global aid system.

Considerable advances in aid and debt relief have been made in the run-up to the G8 meeting, but they pale into insignificance when compared with the fundamental goal—to transform the profoundly unjust and discriminatory international trading system that impoverished the developing countries in the first place. We have always demanded free trade from those countries, so that their markets could be opened up to our multinational corporations, but we do not always reciprocate. We do not practise unfettered free trade, as we limit access to our markets by means of quotas, high tariffs, so-called voluntary agreements and a host of other restrictions whenever our domestic industries come under pressure.

If we are honest, we must admit that the west does not really believe in free trade. What we really believe in is safeguarding our economic dominance at all costs. Nearly all the aid, loan and debt-relief packages put together by the World Bank and the IMF are predicated on liberalisation conditionalities. Before they can receive aid, developing countries are required to agree to dismantle tariff barriers, open up to foreign investment, privatise state-owned companies, reduce public services and hold down wages.

Now we are at it again. Paragraph 2 of the pre-G8 Finance Ministers' statement says that to qualify for debt relief developing countries must

"boost private sector development"

and eliminate

"impediments to private investment, both domestic and foreign."

To take just one example among many, that means that Uganda will have to sell off its water supplies, its agricultural services and its commercial bank, all with minimum regulation.

I do not especially like that policy, but if it worked, a good case could be made for it. But it does not work. According to the World Bank's figures, in its recent report, across the 20 years from 1960 to 1980, before it and the IMF started introducing strict conditions on countries that accepted their loans, median annual growth in developing countries was 2.5 per cent. a year. In the 18 years from 1980 to 1998, it was zero or 0.0 per cent. precisely. Trade is the best route out of poverty, as we can all agree, but not if it is fixed to keep developing countries in subjection as mere suppliers of commodities at rock-bottom prices with severely limited access to western markets. Yes, we should cancel the debt, but we should cancel it unconditionally. We also conveniently forget that all countries that have achieved economic take-off have done so behind high protective walls, and I hope that we will consider that for Africa, too.

Mr. Stephen O'Brien (Eddisbury) (Con): I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this important debate. I am always pleased to follow the distinguished and right hon. Member for Oldham, West and Royton (Mr. Meacher), with his long track record and undoubted concern on these issues. While he concluded on a more consensual note, a degree of anachronism crept into his arguments, because the whole point of the G8 and the Government's aims is that growth is not a zero sum game. The whole idea is that the growth of the rich countries can be spread through trade to help the growth of the developing nations and thus the world generally.

I start by setting out my total agreement with the proposition that the Government have a real opportunity at the G8 to set the agenda and the tone for the two paramount issues of far-reaching concern—climate change and relieving poverty in Africa. Those are the correct priorities, and they are laudable and timely. The Government have my party's support for those overarching themes. This is an occasion on which it is wholly appropriate—as my right hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Mr. Mackay) said—to say that the Secretary of State's speech was one of the best and most memorable that I have heard in this House, and I am grateful to him for it. Equally, I appreciated the response from my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr. Mitchell). There is a danger of the debate turning into a paean of praise, but the whole point is that we have a shared belief in the importance of the subject and in translating our will into effective action. That is the challenge for all of us in this debating Chamber as we discuss the deeply disturbing problems on the ground in Africa.

 

Africa is a vast place and the topic is vast. I hope that the debate will bring out many aspects of the topic, but each one of us has to do our best to focus on the issues on which we can gain some purchase, instead of trying to cover the whole canvas. My own interest is well known, not least because I am Tanzanian born. I am chairman of the all-party group on that country, as well as the all-party malaria group. I am also involved with the all-party Africa group, whose chairman I see in his place, as well as being vice-chairman of the Uganda group and the debt, aid and trade group, which used to be the heavily indebted poor countries group and before that the Jubilee 2000 group—changes of name that demonstrate how these issues have developed over time.

It is pleasing to note that Tanzania has seen a massive increase in the take-up of primary education, from 4 million to 7 million, to which the Secretary of State referred. Of course, as I was finding out in a conversation with the high commissioner of Tanzania to this country just the other day, the challenge is how to develop the secondary education system. By the time one gets any system in place for primary education, the cohort of children who benefit quickly become those who are challenged by the need to develop and consolidate the advantage, all of which has been hugely strengthened and assisted by the good will and financial aid from this country and many others. So that is now the challenge for Tanzania, as well as reaching out to the many rural areas where primary education has not even begun to become a reality.

Although such things, as the Secretary of State said, are certainly examples of aid that works, we need to pause for a moment to wonder whether the phrase that he might have used in his speech is that aid can and often does work, but not always. It is important for the future that western donor countries and their people continue to have the confidence that aid is worth while and an essential thing for us to do. That has been touched on, and it is part of the Secretary of State's and the Government's priority. So when we focus on poverty, in addition to the cancellation of debt, the big challenge now involves multilateral debt, which is subject to much wider agreements and where a solution is more difficult to secure.

Most of us feel that the progress made on private bank debt and bilateral debt through the Paris Club has been very significant and very helpful. However, we should bear in mind the words of Anthony Montague Brown—the former private secretary to Sir Winston Churchill—who, after Sir Winston Churchill died, went off into the City and the banks. In 1976 and 1977, he was instrumental in extending a lot of loans to developing countries. He said in his book that of course people never expected those loans to be repaid. When that is analysed, it is clear that those debts have long since been written off by those banks. The interest has long been way in excess of what was a sensible, commercial return. Let's face it. Many of those debts have in fact been cancelled—rightly—which shows the mental approach at the time.

We should not forget that there comes a time—perhaps this helps the argument of the right hon. Member for Oldham, West and Royton (Mr. Meacher), who does not appear to be in his place at the moment—when we should think about cancelling, either without conditions or without too many conditions, the debts that are causing some of the continuing problems

Apart from hoping that the Secretary of State will carefully consider the arguments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield about the advocacy fund—a topic and policy in which I was glad to be involved in a previous incarnation in the House—my primary argument is that we must consider what gains the best leverage for the aid that is being translated from this country to Africa.

I am sure that many hon. Members are familiar with a very good body of work called the Copenhagen consensus, in which a rigorous assessment was undertaken of all the possible destinations for money in the developing countries and how best that can gain a purchase on the things that really matter when transforming those countries' structural inability to develop, so that they grow and gain the potential for economic independence. Such things were compared with many others that tended to be rather worthy.

I am inevitably bound to mention malaria. Hon. Members will know that I have an obsession with the need to tackle malaria. Rather than going through the detail, I shall quote what the Copenhagen consensus suggested:

"Many recommended malaria control interventions have a mean cost per Disability-Adjusted Life Year"—

even talking in those terms shows the hard-nosed assessments that we have to make, which the Secretary of State has been trying to establish—

"of less than . . . $50 a day and most of them less than . . . $25 which economists consider highly attractive in a very low-income country. As judged by the expert panel of Copenhagen Consensus, these are stunningly attractive investments. This panel of distinguished economists ranked controlling malaria as one of the top four global priorities that would yield the largest benefit/cost ratio."

Given that one of the other factors was dealing with climate change from the western world, we need to consider carefully whether we should devote aid to things other than health and education, clean water and the controlling of infectious disease. They bring the greatest advantages. In addition, we should free the rules for trade and support good governance.

How do we get the money past the tyrants to the poorest people? We face a difficult dichotomy. Where good governance exists, we should use it as a test and reward it with aid directed via Governments, through a liaison committee or non-governmental organisations. I used to think that aid should go directly to NGOs, but to reward good governance we have to go through the democratic processes so that democratically elected politicians gain some credit for what they have done. We should reward them "pour encourager les autres". Unfortunately, of course, les autres are often tyrants who do not allow people in the poorest countries to know about good governance. That is both a challenge and a dichotomy.

As there is a restriction on the overall package, we should use the money to best leverage effect and reward those who have shown good governance. It will increase the confidence of the west in continuing and sustaining that money if we ask for it to be directed where we would gain most leverage. The Copenhagen consensus made it clear, through a rigorous test, that controlling infectious disease was cost-effective. HIV/AIDS and TB unquestionably belong in that category. So, too, does malaria, which is hollowing out the generation of children that replaced those killed by HIV/AIDS.

We must concentrate on training people to deliver health care. Malaria is treatable and curable. The all-party group on malaria recently produced a persuasive report and I am grateful to the Under-Secretary for attending its launch. We can all collectively be proud and confident that, rather than just being worthy, we are making a huge and effective difference to the future of Africa and its peoples.

Ann McKechin (Glasgow, North) (Lab): It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Eddisbury (Mr. O'Brien), who made a thoughtful speech.

Our debate will rightly concentrate on the statistical evidence of the need to address Africa's poverty, to release its potential to grow and flourish, but as the Commission for Africa report correctly states:

"We have to remember that behind each statistic lies a child who is precious and loved. Every day that child, and thousands like her, struggle for breath—and for life—and tragically and painfully lose that fight."

I have had the opportunity to visit Africa only since I was elected, and I have witnessed the outstanding beauty of the continent and the warmth of its people, but I recognise the scale of the challenge that they face and their overwhelming desire for a better future. I am sure that the hon. Member for Tewkesbury (Mr. Robertson) will remember our visit to Rwand