Questions to the Secretary of State for International Development        (17/10/2007)

Mr. Shailesh Vara (North-West Cambridgeshire) (Con): If he will make a statement on the humanitarian situation in Zimbabwe.

The Secretary of State for International Development (Mr. Douglas Alexander): The situation in Zimbabwe continues to deteriorate as a result of the appalling corruption and wilful mismanagement of the Mugabe regime. We are, however, making a major contribution to humanitarian relief and working to protect the people of Zimbabwe from the worst effects of hunger and HIV.

Mr. Vara: I thank the Secretary of State for those comments. Given that more than 3,000 people die of HIV/AIDS in Zimbabwe every week, does he agree with me that the measure of success is not how much money is spent, but the number of people protected from infection and the number treated? Given those circumstances, what is he doing to ensure that British aid money is used to maximum benefit?

Mr. Alexander: On the specific issue that the hon. Gentleman raises, we are providing HIV treatment to 50,000 people in Zimbabwe this year and helping to keep AIDS-affected children in school. Clearly, this is a hugely challenging environment in which to be working at the moment—significant migration out of the country is taking place, its Government are in a relative state of collapse and its economy is diminishing almost by the day—but I assure hon. Members that we are determined to continue to provide humanitarian support, today and tomorrow, to the people of Zimbabwe.

Mrs. Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab): What steps his Department is taking to improve health services in Africa.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development (Mr. Shahid Malik): The UK is improving health in Africa through multilateral aid, including the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and through bilateral programmes. Fifteen per cent. of DFID’s aid goes to health, totalling some £800 million this year, which will rise as the DFID programme expands towards our target spending of 0.7 per cent. of gross national income by 2013. Last month, the UK launched an international health partnership to improve the effectiveness of international funding for health. Five of the IHP’s first-wave countries are in Africa. They are Ethiopia, Zambia, Mozambique, Kenya and Burundi.

Mrs. Moon: I thank my hon. Friend for that response. I am aware that in Mozambique, for example, those who suffer from HIV/AIDS sometimes face the problem that, even if they have access to antiretroviral drugs, supplies run out and the treatment cannot be sustained. Equally, some people are faced with a stark choice of either paying for their drugs or buying food. What can DFID do to ensure that those who access treatment are sustained on it?

Mr. Malik: I thank my hon. Friend for that question. The UK is absolutely committed to the challenge of HIV/AIDS. That was one of the key elements of the agreement at Gleneagles. DFID has committed some £17 million in support to the Ministry of Health in Mozambique. That will help to improve, among other things, HIV/AIDS treatment, including the scaling up of access to antiretrovirals. Therefore, some progress is being made. In sub-Saharan Africa, the numbers on treatment rose tenfold from 2003 to 2006, from 100,000 to over 1.3 million. However, with only one in four in Africa able to access HIV/AIDS treatment, much more needs to be done.

Question to the Secretary of State for International Development        (13/06/2007)

Questions to the Prime Minister      (11/06/2007)

Dr. Evan Harris (Oxford, West and Abingdon) (LD): I was pleased to hear the Prime Minister agree that the use of condoms is critical in fighting AIDS. When he meets the Pope, either as Prime Minister or perhaps afterwards, I hope that he will take the opportunity to make that point.

Will the Prime Minister reflect on his policy with respect to meeting the target of global universal treatment for HIV? His Government have a policy of trying to remove women and children who are being treated in this country for HIV and AIDS to countries where there is not such treatment because they do not have the required immigration status. Especially at a time when we are using those countries’ doctors, is that humane and logical?

The Prime Minister: It is important that we ensure that we treat people who are here fairly. We will put £1.5 billion into HIV/AIDS treatment in Africa over the next few years. However, the trouble is that if we say that everyone who is HIV-positive and comes to this country can get treatment here, we will create a real pull factor for people to come here. We must be careful about how we do this.

Questions to the Prime Minister      (06/06/2007)

Mr. David Cameron (Witney) (Con): The G8 agreed at Gleneagles that by 2010 everyone suffering from HIV/AIDS would have access to the medicines that they need. Will the Prime Minister confirm that, sadly, almost three quarters of sufferers still do not have access to that treatment?

The Prime Minister: There are 1 million more people who receive treatment, but the right hon. Gentleman is right to say that we need to go further. The commitment is to do that by 2010, and I hope that we will recommit to that at the G8 summit at Heiligendamm. In addition, the announcement by the Americans to double their HIV/AIDS spending from $15 billion to $30 billion is extremely important. The Germans have now committed an extra €3 billion of aid to Africa over the next four years, which is also important, and this country is making a huge contribution to fighting HIV/AIDS. Yes, we need to go further, but it is important to realise that, as a result of what was done at Gleneagles, 1 million more people are now receiving treatment.

Mr. Cameron: Charities such as ActionAid believe that the specific proposals set out in the draft communiqué do not go nearly far enough, and they believe that the goal agreed at Gleneagles is on the verge of collapse, which would result in millions of preventable deaths. We have long argued for interim targets, as the Prime Minister knows. Does he agree that it would be a disaster if the current wording of the communiqué is allowed to stand?

The Prime Minister: We are trying to strengthen that language and put in some specifics, particularly in relation to HIV/AIDS treatment. For obvious and natural reasons, pressure groups always say that not enough is being done or that the situation is in danger of collapse. Since Gleneagles, however, there has been almost $40 billion of debt relief; there have been substantial increases in aid, including to Africa; millions more children are in primary education; and, as I said, 1 million extra people are receiving HIV/AIDS treatment. As I saw for myself last week in South Africa, the possibility, if we expand the use of drugs for those people, is that we can save millions of lives, so we have to do so. It is precisely to achieve those types of commitments that we will go to the G8 and negotiate.

Questions to the Prime Minister      (23/05/2007)

Andrew George (St. Ives) (LD): What progress he will report to the forthcoming EU and G8 summits in respect of commitments to the millennium development goals.

The Prime Minister (Mr. Tony Blair): We are making progress on the commitments to the millennium development goals, particularly in respect of the commitment to halve the world's population living in poverty, on which we are making significant progress. In respect of HIV/AIDS, we believe we will have near universal access by 2010. In respect of primary education, there is a big increase in the numbers going into it in Africa, but we need to do much more. The G8 summit in a couple of weeks will be immensely important. Both in Washington last week and in Germany a couple of weeks ago, I urged the American and German Governments to do more in respect of Africa and poverty, and I hope very much that those efforts will come to fruition at the G8 conference.

Andrew George: We are halfway through the 15 years set by the rich world to deliver the millennium promise of making poverty history in the poorest countries around the globe, yet despite the fanfare at Gleneagles two years ago, there are stalled trade talks, the obstacle of an increasingly polarised and dangerous world and a failure to deliver the promised aid. As campaigners say, the world cannot wait, so does the Prime Minister believe that G8 leaders will ever live up to the hopes of their people and, if so, what does he believe is now necessary to deliver— [ Interruption. ]

Mr. Speaker: Order.

The Prime Minister: First, I think it is important that the G8 leaders live up to the commitments given at Gleneagles, and the next couple of weeks will be absolutely vital in that regard. As a result of Gleneagles, we have wiped out billions of dollars-worth of debt for some of the poorest countries, and radically increased the number of children going into primary education—often precisely because of that debt relief. This country should be proud of the fact that it has trebled its aid to Africa and doubled its overall aid budget. As a result of what we are able to do now on HIV/AIDS, a real difference is being made: hundreds of thousands of lives are being saved in Africa. We have to do more and we will do more—the next couple of weeks will be vital in that—but we should be particularly proud of what this country has achieved in relation to the millennium development goals.

Questions to the Chancellor of the Exchequer        (10/05/2007)

Mr. Tom Clarke (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab): As a member of the all-party group that recently visited India, can I assure my right hon. Friend that we were very much focused on millennium development goal 6, particularly when 1,000 people a day die of tuberculosis in India and the country has other problems such as HIV/AIDS? The other side of the picture is that the growing economy in India offers hope that if resources are widely shared for the many and not the few, we can indeed achieve the millennium development goals. Will my right hon. Friend continue to support that strategy?

Mr. Brown: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, who has taken a long-standing interest in these issues and who, like me, recently visited India. He has seen that there is a long way to go in India, with 10 million children still not in school. There is also a long way to go, even as that country develops its wealth, to solve the health problems that my right hon. Friend mentioned. We will continue to support the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which is not simply for HIV/AIDS, but for tuberculosis and other diseases. We will support all the necessary research to provide a preventative cure for malaria and other diseases where new inventions and innovations are needed, and we will continue to build the capacity of health care systems in the poorest countries in the world and work with those countries to do so. I see emerging partnerships between trusts and foundations such as the Gates Foundation and private sector companies, as well as Governments, in doing exactly that. I hope that we will gain all-party support when we do so.

Questions to the Secretary of State for International Development        (28/03/2007)

Ms Sally Keeble (Northampton, North) (Lab): I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement. I hope that his Department will look in particular at evaluating the spend on orphans and vulnerable children. I wonder whether he would agree that the untying of aid from trade, and the introduction of the poverty focus by the Labour Government was probably the single most effective step in improving the effectiveness of UK aid.

Hilary Benn: I agree with my hon. Friend. They were important decisions, taken for exactly the right reasons. On spending on orphans and vulnerable children, one of the reviews that we have been carrying out has been into the impact of our approach to HIV and AIDS and that is one of the issues at which it has been looking.

Questions to the Secretary of State for International Development        (24/01/2007)

Mr. Jeremy Hunt (South-West Surrey) (Con): I know that the Secretary of State is aware of the close connection between the millennium development goals and progress in the battle against HIV/AIDS. He will also be aware of the recent growth in the XDR strain of tuberculosis in South Africa. Is his Department making every effort to ensure that we are as successful in supporting the distribution of drugs to tackle TB as we are in supporting the distribution of antiretroviral drugs to tackle HIV/AIDS?

The Secretary of State for International Development (Hilary Benn): The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to draw attention to the close relationship between AIDS and TB and to the fact that people with AIDS are more susceptible to TB. One of the most practical things that we are doing to support the point that he has made is to contribute to the global fund which was set up to fight those three great diseases: AIDS, TB and malaria. As he will be aware, we are a very significant contributor. We have pledged to put £359 million into the global fund between when it started and 2008.

Questions to the Secretary of State for Health        (09/01/2007)

Mr. David S. Borrow (South Ribble) (Lab): What action her Department is taking to improve HIV/AIDS prevention and education programmes.

The Minister of State, Department of Health (Caroline Flint): The Department is continuing to target HIV health promotion towards the most “at risk” groups in England—namely, gay men and people from African communities. In 2006-07, we made an extra £1 million available to strengthen our HIV work for those groups.

Mr. Borrow: Does my hon. Friend agree that work needs to be more targeted at younger gay men? It is important to emphasise that contracting HIV does not mean simply taking a pill a day, when everything is okay. Drug treatment for HIV is very unpleasant and is not 100 per cent. effective, so we need to get that message through to younger gay men.

Caroline Flint: My hon. Friend makes an important point. There has been a large drop in diagnoses of AIDS and a 70 per cent. drop in AIDS deaths, but it would be ridiculous to suggest anything other than that HIV is something that has to be dealt with every day of a person’s life in respect of the mix of drugs and treatments necessary. My hon. Friend makes an interesting point about the younger age group, many of whom are too young to remember the 1980s campaign and may have a false sense of safety about their future health. I would welcome my hon. Friend, along with the Terrence Higgins Trust, coming to the Department to discuss those issues.

Mr. Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley) (Con): Can I come as well? [Interruption.] Why not? The Minister will know that the incidence of HIV/AIDS has quadrupled since 2000 and part of the problem is the Government’s complacency about it. They announced a substantial advertising campaign last year, but it was many months late and in the end it was pegged back to a £4 million campaign. Would it not be far better if the Government now embarked on a substantial advertising campaign to prevent needless thousands of people contracting HIV/AIDS in the future?

Caroline Flint: I believe that the last Conservative Government had a review in 1995-96. It looked into the value of mass campaigns in respect of HIV/AIDS. After that review, it was argued that the approach should be targeted more at the particularly vulnerable groups most at risk of contracting HIV. That is the position that we adopted and we carry out that targeted work with the Terrence Higgins Trust and the African HIV policy network. Our recent campaign was about getting across a strong message that is appropriate for tackling chlamydia, gonorrhoea and other sexually transmitted infections as well as HIV. The message is: if you are having sex, always make sure that you use a condom.

Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con): Is it not also the case that of the 7,450 new cases of HIV/AIDS in the UK only—of course, it is still far too many—2,356 arose through homosexual sex? Do not many of the cases of AIDS in the UK come from legal and illegal immigrants who enter the country already infected with AIDS? What steps is the Minister taking to liaise with the Home Office to ensure that infection from that source does not spread throughout the UK?

Caroline Flint: We want to work with all communities that are vulnerable to HIV/AIDS, and that is why we support the Terrence Higgins Trust and the African HIV Policy Network. HIV diagnoses have been increasing since 1999 for several reasons. First, test uptake has increased. For example, among gay men it has risen from 45 per cent. in 1997 to 80 per cent. in 2005, and among heterosexuals it has risen from 25 per cent. to 82 per cent. over the same period. More testing is important, and among those tested are people who may have been living with HIV for some time but in whom it is being diagnosed for the first time.

We are not complacent about any of those areas. We have taken other action, including, for example, the testing of pregnant women. Some 95 per cent. of pregnant women with HIV are diagnosed and that has been enormously successful in preventing mother to child transmission.

We are in discussion with the Home Office on several issues, but it is important not to stigmatise people and to do the best we can. We should also remember that we are a very low prevalence country, with lower rates than places such as Spain, France and Portugal, and we should be proud of our record in that area.

Questions to the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development     (06/12/2006)

Cheap Medicines

Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con): What steps he is taking to give poor countries access to cheaper drugs and medicines; and if he will make a statement.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development (Mr. Gareth Thomas): We are providing more finance to help countries get the medicines they need, to help leverage lower prices and to increase the range of medicines available. We back research into neglected diseases, and we support new and innovative ways of improving the supply of cheaper drugs and vaccinations through, for example, UNITAID—the joint UN programme on HIV/AIDS—advanced market commitments and the international finance facility for immunisation.

Tony Baldry: What does the Minister say to the recent Oxfam report which asserts that a number of drug companies and certain Governments are blocking poorer countries’ access to affordable and much needed medicines, and that the Doha declaration of November 2001 is simply being ignored? As the Minister knows, the “Stop AIDS” campaign coalition of non-governmental organisations wants the UK Government to champion the issue at next year’s G8 summit. Will they?

Mr. Thomas: Let me make it clear to the hon. Gentleman that we do not support attempts to go beyond the TRIPS—trade-related intellectual property rights—deal that was negotiated last year. We are clear about that and, in particular, we want American drug companies to desist from advocating such attempts. We think that there are many positive moves to implement the flexibilities agreed under TRIPS— the recent decision by the Thai Government, for example, is particularly interesting. The Brazilian Government, too, have used flexibilities under the TRIPS deal to negotiate lower prices, but we certainly do not support any attempt to go beyond that deal.

Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) (LD): Will the Minister accept that we need not only to reduce the price of drugs for all AIDS victims but also to target marginalised groups, such as sex workers, men who have sex with men, injecting drug users and prisoners, to ensure that they have access to programmes that will help them to stop being the drivers of the epidemic? Only in that way will we reverse and eliminate the rising scourge of AIDS.

Mr. Thomas: The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. We not only need to get the price of drugs down; a series of other measures are needed to make drugs better available to all who need them. He is right to say that there must be an increased focus on marginalised groups, such as men who have sex with men, injecting drug users and people in prison.

Ms Sally Keeble (Northampton, North) (Lab): What progress is being made in ensuring that children get proper access to cheap drugs? In particular, what progress has been made in preparing paediatric antiretroviral formulae and antibiotics for babies and infants at risk of acquiring HIV?

Mr. Thomas: I pay tribute to my hon. Friend’s campaigning work on these issues. She will already be aware of the research that we fund into finding a more effective paediatric version of antiretroviral therapy. She may also be aware of the funding that we provide to the new international drug purchase facility, UNITAID. She may have heard the recent announcement that, together with the Clinton Foundation, UNITAID has been able to negotiate significantly lower prices for the existing paediatric versions of antiretroviral therapy. We welcome that, but we recognise that there is much more to do if we are to find the essential medicines most appropriate to the needs of children and if we are to get them where they need to go.

Questions to the Prime Minister     (06/12/2006)

Mr. David S. Borrow (South Ribble) (Lab): At last night’s meeting of the all-party group on AIDS, Martin Neary of Barnardo’s explained that 250 children in this country are kept alive by NHS AIDS drugs, and that those children are due to be sent back to their country of origin. Will my right hon. Friend agree to meet a small delegation to find a way of ensuring that the life of every child matters?

The Prime Minister: I am certainly happy to meet my hon. Friend and any delegation of his on that subject. In the meantime, I will look into the case and correspond with him.

Questions to the Secretary of State for International Development     (25/10/2006)

G8 (Gleneagles Summit)

Mrs. Siân C. James (Swansea, East) (Lab): My right hon. Friend will know that more than 7,500 people around the world die from AIDS every day. Will he reassure those of my constituents who have written to me to express their concern about the progress that the G8 has made following the Gleneagles summit to ensure that AIDS treatment is available for all developing countries by 2010?

The Secretary of State for International Development (Hilary Benn): The fight against AIDS is one of the most important fights that developing countries are engaged in, as for some it represents an economic catastrophe as well as a human tragedy. The great achievement at Gleneagles was that the world signed up to trying to get as close as possible to securing AIDS treatment for all people in the developing world by 2010. Since then, plans have been drawn up to try and make that happen. In sub-Saharan Africa, three times as many people are now on antiretrovirals compared with 12 months ago. We have not dealt with the problem yet, but we have made some progress. That shows what we can do when we put our minds to it.

Mr. Tom Clarke (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab): Can my right hon. Friend assure the House that Africa will remain top of the agenda in next year’s discussions in Germany, notwithstanding that country’s change of Government?

Hilary Benn: I can, indeed, assure the House because the German G8 presidency has confirmed that Africa’s development will be one of its priorities, particularly in respect of the fight against HIV and AIDS, which we discussed a few moments ago. I welcome that enormously, because Germany has a huge opportunity during its presidency to provide leadership to the G8 and the wider world to ensure that we continue to make progress on honouring the commitments that were so hard fought for at Gleneagles.

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