Hunger in the World

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 5:40 pm on 9 May 1983.

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Photo of Mr Reginald Prentice Mr Reginald Prentice , Daventry 5:40, 9 May 1983

I hope I shall be forgiven for being absent during the earlier part of the debate, but this has been a somewhat confusing day, for reasons that go wider than the subject under discussion. I hope that because we are in the last week of this Parliament our debate has a symbolic implication for the future. We should discuss hunger in the world more often. When we do—for example, in the debates on the second Brandt report—both here and in another place, I fear that the same parliamentarians speak to each other in a sort of charmed circle. Those of us who have been committed to this subject for a long time have failed to create a sufficient sense of priority among our fellows, both inside and outside Parliament, and I hope that in the next Parliament there will be more time for debate, and a greater sense of urgency about these issues.

I speak as a former Minister for Overseas Development. I had the task on two occasions of leading the British delegation to the FAO annual conference and I attended the Council of Ministers of the Community when food aid was being discussed. This is a subject on which priorities are argued by the inner circle, so to speak, and I fear that much of what I have heard today has been a repetition of earlier debates.

I heard my right hon. Friend on the radio this morning and I thought that, as a Minister, he talked sense. I agree that, whereas we need to do more for the hungry people of the world, the latest ideas to come from the Community are not necessarily the most helpful way of approaching the task. We already have too much machinery —national, European, United Nations, the machinery of United Nations agencies and much else besides. We need to increase the resources available to the institutions we have, perhaps making them more efficient and cost-effective. We shall not do that by setting up new institutions or by creating initiatives that simply produce masses of paper but no tangible results for the hungry people of the world.

If the proposal we are discussing, or any proposals, were to lead to more resources being made available from Britain and our partners in the Community, that would be welcome because we could say that more was being tone, but from my understanding of what is happening we are simply allocating resources to the ODA from another part of the overall programme, and that is not helpful.

I recall the difficulty we had when I was Minister in working out the aid framework every year, having to decide what resources should be allocated to the vast number of claimants for bilateral and multilateral aid. I recall the difficulty involved in making adjustments, and I appreciate that my right hon. Friend must be experiencing similar difficulties now. His task is not helped by the creation of new machinery, unless a strong case is presented to us for its establishment, and that, has not occurred.

In general, food aid is not the most effective way to fight the problems of hunger, malnutrition and poverty. It has an important part to play, especially in times of emergency. One thinks of earthquakes and droughts. The terrible situation in Ethopia immediately comes to mind. On such occasions there is urgent need for the world community to help with relief supplies—food, medical and other items — but that is a relief rather than a development operation and it is no substitute for the ongoing and much larger solutions that are required. Jonathan Swift wrote of the importance of making two blades of grass grow where one grew before.

I remember a visit I paid in the autumn of 1968 to the Punjab, that region of India where the green revolution —to use the jargon of the time—had been much more successful than it had been in most other parts of India or the developing world. New strains of seeds had been introduced, developed mainly by the state agricultural university there as part of an aid programme in which that university was helped to a great degree by the university of Ohio. Trying to persuade the local farmers to use the new seeds was the first difficulty to overcome. Farmers the world over are conservative and suspicious of intellectual advice. However, once the new seeds had been shown to work well, the farmers were anxious to obtain them. When I visited the area the farmers were walking hundreds of miles to the university to obtain the new strains of seeds.

It is not just a question of new seeds, of course. Irrigation, fertilisers, pesticides and so on are all factors to be taken into account, and it is especially in those spheres that we must help the developing countries. I wish the British people were more aware of the achievements, for example, of the Tropical Products Institute and the help that is given by British scientific institutions as part of our aid programme. There is also the work of British exporters in the developing world. For many years they have been helping to tackle coffee berry disease in India and many other problems throughout the world. We can do much by providing technical assistance to help them to increase their food production.

I have been horrified to see some figures about the food situation in Africa. A recent report by the United Nations world food council pointed out that per capita food production in Africa declined by 7 per cent. in the 1960s and by 15 per cent. in the 1970s. After a small improvement in 1980, it had fallen again in 1981. The director-general of the FAO said recently: At present, 20 to 30 per cent. of their population"— the poorest African countries— is hungry and malnourished during the greater part of the year". That shows that we are not talking about temporary crises arising from, say, drought, but that we are faced with an ongoing situation of human misery on a vast scale.

We must do more to help through existing channels rather than setting up new machinery. I welcomed the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Shoreham (Mr. Luce) when he spoke of the Williamsburg summit. I hope that the Prime Minister still intends to attend it. I recently wrote to her, the Foreign Secretary, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Minister for Overseas Development. My plea—it was not original; it has been made on many occasions by hon. Members—was to the effect that the Williamsburg summit was an occasion for the leading Western nations to commit themselves on a much bigger scale to the global fight against poverty and hunger, and to do so because it is morally right and because of the overwhelming need for interdependence, a word used strongly in the second Brandt report.

At Williamsburg, world statesmen should be looking for a way of stimulating the world economy and promoting economic growth without starting a world inflationary spiral all over again. I believe that there is overwhelming evidence that the best way to promote growth without the danger of inflation is to concentrate immediate efforts on the poorest parts of the world and to promote successful development programmes in those regions. The rural sector must have priority in development programmes.

If one looks at the problems of many countries in Africa and southern Asia and the plight of their cities, one sees that that plight is aggravated year by year by the poverty of the countryside. Despite all the terrible problems of Calcutta, people still go there from the rural areas, consequently increasing the overcrowding, unemployment and urban squalor. I have heard it said that for every new job created in Calcutta — they are created in the industrial sector—unemployment is increased because, on average, three people go into the city in search of every one new job. The only answer to that dilemma is successful development of the countryside, of which food production is the most important, though not necessarily the only, element. If farmers become more prosperous they will want other goods and there will be a spin-off in other parts of the economy.

I hope that these issues will not be forgotten during the general election campaign. I hope that the pressure groups —the World Development Movement, Christian Aid, the United Nations Association, the churches and many other people—will ask candidates of all parties where they stand in relation to Great Britain's effort in assisting the poorest countries. Our aid programme is the clearest single test of our national will to help. Commodity problems, private investment and all the other such matters need to be discussed. It should not be a party issue.

Great Britain's performance in the past has been inadequate under Governments of both parties. I believe that the same is roughly true of all other Western countries. One needs to alter the national mood towards these matters. People should not regard help for the developing world as a marginal charity—something into which one puts a coin or two if one is in the right mood and can afford it. Aid should be seen as a vital priority within our national policy because of the need for interdependence and for moral reasons. I hope therefore that this subject will be raised at election meetings and that candidates of all parties will be challenged to say where they stand on this issue.