Africa (Poverty)

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 1:31 pm on 30 June 2005.

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Photo of Andrew Mitchell Andrew Mitchell Shadow Secretary of State (Home Office) 1:31, 30 June 2005

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.