Montserrat

Part of Prayers – in the House of Commons at 9:34 am on 18 February 1998.

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Photo of Mr Bowen Wells Mr Bowen Wells Conservative, Hertford and Stortford 9:34, 18 February 1998

In debating this subject this morning, we should always remember the people of Montserrat, who have suffered grievously from the eruption of the volcano, which started in June 1995. It has meant that many of them—the vast majority—have not only lost their homes, most of which were their own property, but have lost their livelihoods, their schools and their community. They have had to move from one area to another of Montserrat. Many of them have had to go overseas to find a new life. In short, the eruption of the volcano has destroyed their lives and changed them irrevocably.

What this debate must concentrate on, and what we must all think about throughout our praise and criticisms of the policies that have been followed, is our concern for the people of Montserrat. I honestly believe that all those involved on the government side—the Governor, the Government of Montserrat, the Department for International Development and its predecessor, the Overseas Development Administration, and the Foreign Office—have all attempted in their different ways to help the people of Montserrat.

There have been some mistakes and failures, and I am afraid that this debate will, of course, concentrate on them, but before we begin on that criticism, we should also remember the dedicated and sensitive work done by many people on the island of Montserrat, in the Department for International Development and in the Foreign Office, who have done a great deal to alleviate the suffering of the people of Montserrat. I know from their testimony to our Committee, the Select Committee on International Development, that they would have liked to do more. Many hours of dedicated work have been involved, and we should pay tribute to that.

Undoubtedly, the basic problem arises from difficulties that we have invented for ourselves. The island of Montserrat is a beautiful island 12 miles by seven miles in the most beautiful blue warm sea of the Caribbean. It has had connections with Britain for more than 450 years. It is an island in which 11,000 people dwelt under the British flag. It is unusual for a Caribbean island in that it is not an obvious place for tourist development. It does not have the white sand beaches of many of the beautiful islands in the West Indies. It has a different economy; it has been a successful economy in many ways.

In the past five or six years, Montserrat has suffered several serious setbacks. The first was a human one. The elected Government of Montserrat indulged in offshore banking in a way that was, to put it mildly, unsatisfactory. That was followed by a devastating hurricane that destroyed the whole of the main city of Plymouth, which was painstakingly rebuilt at considerable expense to the Department for International Development over the following three or four years. By the time Montserrat recovered in June 1995, it was no longer dependent on budgetary aid from the United Kingdom. It had restored its economy under the leadership of an able development economist, Prime Minister Rueben Meade. Once more, Montserrat was able to look forward to an exciting and rosy future—whereupon the volcano began to erupt for the first time in 300 years. From that moment on, the livelihoods and lives of the people of Montserrat have been destroyed.

The government of the island is divided between the United Kingdom, in the person of the Governor on the island, who reports to the Foreign Office, and the elected Government of Montserrat. However, the Governor does not report directly to the Foreign Office, because the Foreign Office set up the dependent territories regional secretariat in Barbados. The Governor reports to the Foreign Office in London via the DTRS in Barbados and to the elected Government of Montserrat—no wonder that several Governors have described their condition as schizophrenic. It is not an easy post to fill: on the one hand, the Governor has to be the representative of the elected Government of Montserrat to the Government of Britain; and on the other, he has to be the representative of the United Kingdom Government to the elected Government of Montserrat and the people of Montserrat.

Into that mixture, we have introduced further complications by the way in which we deliver assistance to Montserrat through the Department for International Development, whose development division is also located in Barbados. It has three pockets out of which to finance Montserrat: first, emergency aid, which came into operation because of the volcanic devastation; secondly, budgetary aid to support the budget of the Government of Montserrat, over which rigid control is exercised; and thirdly, development finance. The Barbados development division also mans the DTRS—the Foreign Office outpost in Barbados—in respect of the delivery of development aid. Emergency aid is delivered direct from London, as it was when these events started. Budgetary aid is administered from the Department's office in Barbados.

I describe that complicated organisation because it leads me to the points that must be addressed. No one in that system has both the responsibility for the government of Montserrat and the money with which to do anything on the island. The result is an elongated, complicated and contradictory system of management on the island. The recommendation of the report of the International Development Committee, which has not been resolved by the Government's response, is that that should stop. We should provide the island with a management system that is efficient and comprehensible, and serves the people of Montserrat. The Committee believes that that can only be achieved if one Department has both the responsibility and the budget to meet that responsibility. Our report states that we believe that that Department should be the Foreign Office, although it could be another Department—for example, the Department for International Development, if the Government so chose. However, if the Foreign Office claims and acknowledges responsibility, it must be given a separate budget to run affairs in Montserrat, because only then can we simplify the lines of authority and manage events efficiently.

The budget for Montserrat should not come within the budget of the Department for International Development; it should be a separate budget. Indeed, the emergency expenditure, which has already cost the British Government more than £50 million—a huge sum to come out of the international development budget—should have been met, not from the contingency reserve of the Department for International Development, as the Government have suggested, but from the contingency reserve of the Treasury, because no one can forecast a volcano's eruption or make provision for it. The emergency was therefore truly unforeseen, and should have been met by an emergency injection of money.

Why does the Committee say that? The House should understand exactly what the contingency reserve of the Department for International Development is used for if it is not used to meet expenditure arising from the volcano's eruption on Montserrat. It is generally set aside at the beginning of the year to accommodate and provide flexibility in the administration of the Department's budget. By the end of the year, it has always been entirely utilised—that is, it has been spent on good international development objectives, providing assistance to some of the poorest countries in the world.

If we use that money to meet the problems resulting from the volcanic eruption in Montserrat, it is obviously not available for use in respect of the other aspects of aid. That is why we say that an emergency of that sort should not lead to a reduction in the Department's investment in its other aid objectives—expenditure on an emergency should come from the contingency reserve of the Treasury. The Government's response deliberately fudges those issues, and the House should understand what was implied and what the Committee recommended.

We have to sort out, first, the aid management scheme and, secondly, who is responsible for what in Montserrat. We have to give the Governor and the elected Government clear powers, and those powers should not overlap as they currently do. Let me give one example from the evidence in the report. Governor Savage recommended to the Foreign Office that we should build 1,000 houses in the north of Montserrat, away from the volcano, so that we could accommodate those who would have to move because of the volcanic activity. He told the Committee that, if the volcano had not erupted in a way that destroyed homes, he would have looked very silly having spent money on 1,000 homes in a safe part of the island which were not needed.

That recommendation was made in 1995 and 100 houses have so far been built. Their construction was authorised by the Secretary of State after 19 lives were lost in Montserrat on 25 June last year. The houses have been erected relatively quickly, but, in the meantime, because of the lack of alternative housing in the north, many of Montserrat's people have been living in deplorable conditions in makeshift shelters for more than two years, and they frequently have to move from one shelter to another. None of us would want to live in such conditions, nor would we want any of those people to have to continue to do so, but they are still living there.

Why did that happen? Why were 1,000 houses not built? The reason is that the Government of Montserrat did not want them to be built. They thought that, if we built 1,000 houses, it would signal to the people of Montserrat that they must evacuate the island because it had no future and that the people would therefore leave Montserrat; so the muddle continued. That is why I say that we have to sort out the constitution and government responsibilities properly, so that there is no overlap or confusion and so that we give the people of Montserrat a proper system of government of which we and they can be proud.

The combination of the British effort on the island of Montserrat and British support for its people is vital for its future. Montserrat will have a rosy future once the volcanic activity has died down. The people of Montserrat have great ingenuity and a strong system of values. In spite of all the difficulties affecting schools, Montserrat's excellent education system still achieves much higher results than any other comparable West Indian island.

The people of Montserrat offer us a challenge—to sort out the management, efficiency and control of our aid programme. I do not think that the Government have begun to give us the answers.