Clause 14 - Functions of the commission etc.
International Development Bill
4:00 pm
Mr Andrew Rowe (Faversham and Mid Kent, Conservative)
Given that the Secretary of State for the Department to which the Bill relates has always shown a degree of scepticism about the value of putting development funds into higher education, I want to know that there is a serious intention to ensure that suitable candidates are supported in adequate numbers in achieving the training or post-qualification opportunities that they need. I understand full well that the Secretary of State is concerned that in many countries the higher education system has tended to fall into the hands of a self-perpetuating elite. It is therefore difficult to pretend that in such countries a direct grant to the higher education system is a grant for the relief of poverty, especially if many who receive such grants or scholarships do not return to their own land.
However, I also understand full well that in many countries in which DFID is active there is an unmet need among people who work with the disabled and the very poor, or who develop agricultural and other expertise, for the sort of opportunities that are currently—and, I suspect, will be for some time to come—provided only by higher education institutions in this country. I am anxious that we are making matters difficult for too many people, and I speak from considerable personal experience.
Every year for many years, my wife and I have entertained in our house students from the Centre for International Child Health, which is one of many centres of excellence in this country which provide training and postgraduate qualifications for people working overseas. I have been greatly impressed by the variety of people who come here for a year, who have included nuns who work in very difficult conditions in refugee camps in Goma and are funded, with difficulty, by their NGO. They return home with considerably more skill with which to develop the services that are so desperately needed.
One of my wife's current students is a man from Sierra Leone whose family must be traumatised since to take up his place on the course, he had to come here with an inappropriate visa, and his wife and child—when she first heard fireworks, she thought that she was being shot at—are now in a dispersal asylum centre somewhere in the north of England while he continues to study in London. That is one example of the difficulties encountered by people for whom we show too little sympathy and provide too few resources.
I am taking the opportunity presented by the clause to make the case to the Minister that we must be more generous and find better ways of ensuring that the people who win the scholarships are the right ones. One problem is that some are chosen by their superiors for a year of rest and recreation, either as a result of a bribe or because they think it would be nice, when people who need the course and could achieve much more as a result of it do not get a look in.
There are twin elements to be considered: first, we must ensure that the right people are selected and, secondly, we must increase the opportunities for people who, in the most difficult conditions, return to do the sort of work that DFID is supposed to be making a priority.