Clause 1 - Development Assistance
International Development Bill
6:15 pm
Mr Andrew Rowe (Faversham and Mid Kent, Conservative)
I am slightly ambivalent about the amendment. The Opposition have tabled many useful and important amendments, but I have slightly less enthusiasm for amendment No. 6. To tell people in developing countries about the conditions of schools in Hackney or about the incidence of methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus in British hospitals might help to anchor them there. Indeed, many of the teachers who are immorally recruited from countries that need them much more than we do can be discovered hurrying home again once they find out what it is like to teach in a British school. An education programme might therefore be useful. However, that raises two serious questions. The first concerns the colonising of the professions in countries that need them more than we do.
The Minister knows that I have raised that subject with his colleagues in the Department of Health and the Department for Education and Employment more than once. The Government are trying to behave scrupulously in the matter, but they are being totally undermined by the fact that no health trust in this country would, in extremis, turn first to the national health service registers; they would turn instantly to a private agency to provide them with weekend cover or emergency support. Those private agencies are not inhibited by Government guidelines. They go round the world, recruiting professionals who are sucked into the public system in a rather indirect way.
That is a lamentable outcome when we consider that the number of teachers dying in Malawi each year is greater than the number being trained. The idea that we should further remove some of them to teach in our schools is shocking and runs against our development philosophy and intentions. We need to have an education campaign not merely in developing countries, but in our own country, where we should be discussing development issues on a wider scale than we currently do. There is much to be said for increasing public understanding of development issues, including whether it is proper to recruit from overseas.
I am ambivalent about the amendment for another reason. If we could create the kind of conditions in the countries that need our help in which professionals could study and exercise their skills, and we could provide them with economic and military stability that would enable them to live in peace, their desire to stay where they are would be enormously increased. None of us would want to leave our friends and family, customs and culture and fly overseas—unless we are members of the International Development Committee—to live elsewhere, unless we really felt that the gains would be so much greater. It is not a matter of encouraging people from overseas; it is more a matter of putting our resources into education and other issues. If, in the process, people realise that life in this country is not entirely a bed of roses, that is fine. I am not sure that I am entirely in favour of the Bill creating a demand for an education programme that is designed to show people that it is not worth coming to live here.