Sir Desmond Swayne
MP for New Forest West · Conservative · United Kingdom
“Just how confident is the Minister that this was not a cyber-attack? How confident is he of the resilience of the system in the event of such an attack, and how confident is he in the willingness and ability of the Government to retaliate in the event of such an attack, as the best form of deterrence?”
“I join that long list of UK Ministers who have raised, at the very highest level in Israel, the most egregious practices in the west bank, designed specifically to prevent a two-state solution, only for Israeli policy to double down. Accordingly, I congratulate the Secretary of State.”
“I am delighted by the reprieve—the New Forest was to be split, and part of it swallowed by Southampton. Will the Secretary of State accept my representation that we want the integrity of the New Forest to remain, and the last thing we want is for it all to be swallowed by Southampton?”
“To address one of the points made by my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings, that takes account of the fact that there may be different levels of need in different areas.”
“Yes, essentially today we are putting these services on a statutory footing. Of course subsequent Governments can change statutes, but this Bill makes it an explicit decision of this House and Parliament, rather than a fiat by Government decision.”
“I will address exactly that point shortly. If a child is not developing properly and is not sleeping, feeding or communicating, parents need to know that they have somewhere to turn.”
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“The hon. Gentleman is right about the figure of 168 million. The only positive thing that one can say is that it has fallen by a third since 2000. The World Food Programme was involved in the project in Nepal, and the services of the supplier were discontinued. None the less, it reinforces the message—we must get this through using our international ethical trading initiative—that producers must take control of their supply chains.”
“Our £7.4 million programme with the International Labour Organisation is training some 575 factory inspectors and carrying out, with our funding, some 1,800 factory investigations for electrical, fire and structural problems. We are driving forward that agenda.”
“My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State announced up to £2 million of aid to Vanuatu, principally through UN agencies and our rapid response facility.”
“My understanding is that the programme is designed to lift some 50 million people out of poverty by 2022. With regard to the seed provision, my understanding is that it is not compulsory to take it and that the legislation that has been put in place is standard.”
“By next year we will have spent £1.8 billion on promoting employment. We are shifting to economic generation and job creation. I fundamentally disagree with the hon. Lady’s approach.”
“It is an effective way of operating and it has been a success, so I hope it is going to be part of the agenda in future.”
“As part of that agreement, we have committed an average of €60 million per year. UNITAID provided 400,000 children with fixed-dose combinations last year, and was instrumental in reducing the price of those doses from $252 per child in 2006 to $130 in 2011. Those actions contributed to the 52% reduction in child infections since 2001. That reduction has been accelerating in recent years. UNITAID also funds the medicines patent pool, which has been performing well. I know that the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts has an interest in it because she raised it with my noble Friend Baroness Northover. That model was designed specifically for AIDS, but it is reasonable to ask whether it can be expanded and used to deal with other diseases.”
“That is twice the infection rate of young men, and it represents 22% of new infections. In sub-Saharan Africa, 57% of sufferers are women. We want to use market shaping to ensure that drugs are available at affordable prices, so we have committed £35 million between 2012 and 2015 to the Clinton Health Access Initiative. That money has been used effectively to shape the market and to bring about £1 billion of savings to the purchasing countries, which translates to 2.5 million more people being treated and getting drugs, so it is an important part of the agenda. The hon. Members for Dumfries and Galloway and for Airdrie and Shotts spoke about children. I recognise that there is a gap in the market for paediatric care. The United Kingdom and France are the major funders of UNITAID, to which we made a 20-year commitment.”
“We are not slacking or suffering from donor fatigue. The measure of that—the hon. Members for Glasgow Central and for Airdrie and Shotts referred to this—is our commitment of £1 billion to the Global Fund from 2014 to 2016, subject to a 10% burden share. We see ourselves as the voice of the affected populations. I will return to that point, because a number of hon. Members have expressed concern about it. We are driving forward improvement and integrating HIV treatment with health systems in the countries where people are affected. The hon. Member for Glasgow Central drew attention to that important agenda. We are driving forward the centrality of women and girls. He was entirely right when he said that, every hour, 50 young women between the ages of 15 and 24 are affected.”
“We set out our approach in the document “Towards zero infections” in 2011, and we updated it in “Towards zero infections: two years on” at the end of 2013. In those documents, we clearly laid out a pathway for withdrawing from bilateral funding and transferring to a multilateral approach to this problem. Principally, we are going to work through the Global Fund, which represents about one fifth of the entire world’s contribution. We have changed the way we operate, but we have not reduced it at all. I looked at the figures extensively this morning. From 2006-07 to 2009-10, we spent £849 million on HIV/AIDS, and from 2010-11 to 2013-14 we spent £1,070 million. The highest years for expenditure were last year and one a couple of years before that. Therefore, quite properly, we are maintaining the pressure on this important issue.”
“He has worked very hard on HIV and AIDS in his constituency, where he rightly says that they have been a significant issue. I pay tribute to him. I have been asked a large number of questions, so I will race through putting the Government’s position on the record, and then I will deal with the questions as expeditiously as I can. The hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts said that there are 35 million HIV-positive sufferers, but I think that one of the most worrying statistics is that 19 million of them do not know that they have the disease. We have to draw attention to that. Only 34% of those who are eligible for treatment under the World Health Organisation’s 2013 treatment guidelines have access to antiretroviral treatment. We remain the second biggest donor in the world.”
“It is always an enormous pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Anas Sarwar), particularly when he makes such a helpful and thoughtful contribution. I congratulate the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Pamela Nash) not only on securing this debate and on introducing it so well but on the enormous impact that her all-party group has achieved with its two publications. It is extraordinary for an all-party group to be able to inform the public and the legislature in that way. I commend the other Members who have contributed: the hon. Members for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Jim Sheridan) and for Dumfries and Galloway (Mr Brown) and my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Simon Kirby). I owe my hon. Friend a particular debt because he drew my attention to this subject and engaged and interested me in it.”
“Frankly, I believe that our funds are better expended elsewhere, where we have a comparative advantage. Remember that we have not made a saving; we are spending more than we were spending before. We are spending it differently and I believe that we are spending it effectively, although we are not funding IAVI to the extent that we were in the past. That is a perfectly reasonable position to have taken, given the change in the situation.”
“There has been no cut. We fulfilled the contract that we had with IAVI. All the money that we had committed was paid. We have a new contract now for £5 million, for which it competed, for a slightly different programme. Let us be clear about what has happened. It is quite right that we have withdrawn from something that we were previously involved in, just as any organisation continually reviews its operations and does what it does best. I understand that some six vaccines went for field trials and we were funding that process. The results were disappointing, so it was back to the laboratory. We do not consider laboratory work as part of our comparative advantage. There are organisations in the world that are much better at dealing with that sort of scientific funding and do that work.”
“Only when that happens will more people be able to access preventive programmes, get tested, and initiate and adhere to treatments. The product development partnerships model has been very successful in bringing forward new drugs to the market. It has brought forward 43 new drugs in the past 10 years, and there are 350 under development. The Department for International Development is a strong supporter of PDPs; indeed, we were the first Government donor to them. I congratulate the Labour party on its initiative in 2008 and on driving forward that innovative agenda. It was an important contribution. We remain a globally significant player in that field, having committed £154.2 million between 2013 and 2018. I was asked any number of questions. Let me start with those about vaccines and the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative.”
“The commitment of an average of €60 million per year for 20 years has been and will be met, but it is an average. There was a reduction, and my understanding is that it was made good with a €40 million contribution. The contributions are being met and we are fulfilling the requirements. HIV treatment is linked to broader issues of health development, the strengthening of health systems, gender equality, and stigma and discrimination. All those things have to be addressed. We have to have a rights-based prevention and treatment regime. That remains a key policy objective in tracking how our contributions and investments deal with those issues. We need to be much better informed, and we must understand how to tackle stigma.”
“My estimate is that most countries would want to put research funding into a direct contribution that they control and to know where it is going. I will not go any further than that, because I was asked about 90-90-90 and I have one minute left to respond. It is a very interesting thing. It is far too soon to tell. My concern is that it adds a very substantial burden to the funding that already exists, and the emphasis must be on the poorest and the sickest first. I would want to see a little more about how the UNITAID proposals are brought forward before committing myself irrevocably to the 90-90-90 strategy.”
“The background to the issue is that for the past 10 years the World Health Organisation has convened a number of working groups to discuss and suggest solutions to the issues that the hon. Lady has raised, namely, funding flows, innovative funding mechanisms and co-ordination of health research. The latest of these groups—the consultative working group—suggested that we should establish a WHO global R and D observatory and a pooled fund for product R and D, together with a co-ordinating mechanism to support the fund. The World Health Assembly is due to discuss that matter later this year. My concern is this: will countries wish to put more into this pool than they are putting in at the moment to contributions to R and D, particularly when the pool will be controlled by a mechanism other than the countries themselves?”
“When we make a trading agreement, we have to ensure that we are absolutely certain that we are not compromising ourselves on intellectual property and that we are not going to restrict access to drugs as a consequence of the decisions we make. That is just down to being vigilant when we come to make these arrangements. I was specifically asked about research and development. That agenda has been driven forward largely by civil society, rather than by nation states and Governments. Nevertheless, it is important. Frankly, it is unlikely that there will be a legally binding instrument for health research and co-ordination. The Government’s view is that any agreement needs to be built on existing mechanisms, such as that proposed by the expert working group.”
“I come on to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and the impact of any trade negotiations. I was asked whether we have formal input into the process. The reality is that, as a consequence of decisions taken in 1975—decisions that might be reviewed if the election result turns out the way I want it to—trade policy is a European Commission competency. Within the UK Government, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is the lead Department in relation to that, but DFID successfully ensures that issues such as access to medicines and intellectual property rights lead to joint discussions between our Departments. It is physically in BIS but it is actually staffed by DFID officials. Therefore, we do that. On the issue itself, my own view is that it is down to the negotiations at the time, on a case-by-case basis.”
“Again, I entirely share her view that we have to continue investing in alternative point-of-care technology, and in research and development in that area. I know that there have been more than 924,000 CD4 tests at point of care, but she is right that load testing is a much better and much more valuable tool. The way the Global Fund works is that it asks countries that are capable of supporting the network with laboratories for viral load testing to apply for that funding, and it asks other countries that are not able to support that to apply, certainly for the moment, for funding to deal with CD4 and whatever else may be brought forward. The work of UNITAID and the Clinton health foundation has been instrumental in reducing the price of viral load testing, which was one of the principal problems with it.”
“The way we get around it at the moment is through the funding of the Robert Carr network, to which we have committed £4 million until the end of this month, and then we will have to replenish it. That is underfunded; there is a £13 million funding gap in respect of the Robert Carr network. We have to work with our donor partners to try to see how that gap can be filled. I agree entirely with the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts that viral load testing is the top end. It is exactly what we should be pursuing. I am glad that the price has fallen significantly as a consequence of the market shaping; it is down to a cap of $9.40, which is down some 40% in low-income and middle-income countries. The problem is, as she rightly pointed out, that that requires a developed network of laboratory testing.”
“But hey—they are middle-income countries, and we are trying to encourage people to invest properly and to step up, as they are richer countries, and fund their health systems properly and have properly integrated health systems. That is an important part of the deal. I accept entirely that that is a bit like falling off a cliff. Perhaps we should have some system akin to, say, universal credit, where there is a taper, as countries move from low-income status to middle-income status. I accept that there is an argument—a case to be made here. I am open to that discussion. It is something that we would have to agree with our international partners; I do not think we would have leave to change the system ourselves. Hon. Members have drawn attention to a very clear problem.”
“Absolutely, but the difference is this. Funding field trials is one thing but going back to the laboratory and working there is a different field of endeavour, one where we have no comparative advantage. [ Interruption. ] I think we will just have to agree to disagree about this one, but there has absolutely been no cut in our funding of IAVI. We fulfilled our contracts and entered into a new one—a quite different one—with IAVI. Now we come to the big question of the middle-income countries. I accept entirely that, when a country becomes a middle-income country, it hits a double whammy: one, the funding is withdrawn; and, two, all the prices go up.”
“Since 2009, DFID has provided £180 million to six Commonwealth organisations. The budget is some £50 million this year and it will remain so in the next financial year.”
“I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady. Looking at the budget, the scholarship fund currently runs at £23.6 million and next year it will be £23.6 million. There is no cut whatsoever—rejoice!”
“We work with agencies such as UNICEF and Save the Children to meet the immediate needs of children, but our key agenda is to link humanitarian assistance with long-term development.”
“Yes; absolutely. I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman’s work in driving forward that agenda. He is right that people will not achieve their potential while they are traumatised and do not have education and proper support. One third of refugee children are without primary education and some three quarters are without secondary education. It is for that reason that we have more than doubled our budget for education in conflict-affected and fragile states. We are determined to drive forward that agenda internationally.”
“We have a project to reduce stunting. We spend a great deal of our budget on humanitarian relief that is targeted at children. It is a problem to which we are alive and on which we are leading.”
“That is what we should have been talking about tonight: how we get behind that agenda. They wasted the opportunity—”
“Member for Luton South (Gavin Shuker) asks, “What about the SDGs?” We canvassed hard and we have succeeded in getting specific targets and goals on health care. When it comes to climate change, there is again no division of substance between us. On equality, there is the principle of no one being left behind before a target can be met. Again, there is absolutely no division of substance between us. I come back to the speech by the Chairman of the Select Committee. He pointed out that we now have some 17 goals and 169 targets, when it was the ambition of the Secretary-General that we would have something small and understandable—something that we could all get behind and campaign on, something that we could measure and something that we could hold Governments to account on.”
“What have we got in the motion that seeks to divide us? The 0.7% target? We were all in the same Division Lobby on 0.7%. The only gripe is one of process—what kind of Bill it was. We are also absolutely united in our approach to the importance of health. I pay tribute to the last Labour Government, who increased the bilateral spend on health. We have continued that; so much so that in the last seven years, bilateral health expenditure has doubled and now represents almost a quarter—23%—of our spend. We have already heard about the £1 billion commitment that has been made to the global fund. That will fund life-saving treatment for an additional 750,000 people with AIDS. There is no issue between us on health. [ Interruption. ] The hon.”
“He is right to praise that excellent initiative, which we are now considering what we can do to expand. I hope I have been able to reassure him on that point. The hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) brought her long experience and knowledge of nutrition to this debate, but when she went on to climate change there was an element of criticism. I would point out that we were one of the few countries that constantly tried to get a specific reference to the 2° target back into the goals. This has been a very good debate in many respects— [ Interruption. ] Yes, there is a “but”. I want to return to the opening of the debate. We have a motion before us that seeks to divide the House. I have sat here and listened to all these excellent speeches and searched for the issue of substance that divides us.”
“It is all in here: exactly how every single one of the targets has to be permeated with the key issue of sustainability. We are confident that the goals will be universal and we are ready to play our part: we have a strong cross-Government approach to this agenda, which is crucial to ensuring that all Departments are engaged and that the UK will be well placed to deliver these goals—it says. My hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Heather Wheeler) raised our sights and our ambition, pointing the debate back to the millennium goals. The hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) focused our attention back on the Environmental Audit Committee report, but also made an excellent point about the international citizen service.”
“I thought the remarks of the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth on fair trade were particularly pithy. He rightly drew attention to the false dichotomy between security and defence, and development; they are intimately connected. My right hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry) gave us the advantage of his 30 years’ experience, including as a Minister, and rightly drew our attention back to climate change and sustainability. The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley) highlighted the important report from the Environmental Audit Committee and asked several detailed questions. I offer her a trade. I have every intention of reading her report, but perhaps she will read this report: “A New Global Partnership: Eradicate Poverty and Transform Economies through Sustainable Development”.”
“The Independent Commission for Aid Impact, which we set up specifically to examine what was going on, drew attention to the problems with the project, and, as a result, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State cancelled it. The hon. Lady also mentioned the PIDG, which, I recollect, was set up in 2002—perhaps when the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) was in the Department. However, we will attend to the issues raised in the NAO report. I share some of the concerns, but we need to bear in mind the huge leverage of the PIDG in getting private finance into poor countries. In her short, but pithy speech, the hon. Lady also asked about the ILO, as did other hon. Members. We took the decision we did following the multilateral aid review, but we still work closely with the ILO—in Bangladesh, for example.”
“Member for Gordon (Sir Malcolm Bruce) for his excellent speech. He hit the nail on the head, as one would expect from a Select Committee Chairman of 10 years, and I shall return to his speech shortly, if time allows, because it was a seminal contribution. The hon. Member for East Lothian (Fiona O’Donnell), who rightly concentrated on malaria, made some important points, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) concentrated on tuberculosis and brought the benefit of his long experience, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy), who has long been committed to these issues. The hon. Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) concentrated on the importance of our taking a lead and asked several questions about TradeMark Southern Africa.”
“This debate has, to a large extent, been wrested from the Opposition Front-Bench team and rescued by the many excellent contributions we have heard. We began with the right hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Dame Tessa Jowell), who rightly pointed out the importance of pre-school education, and then my right hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Mr O’Brien) brought the benefit of his expertise in stressing the need for security. I always welcome the experience and wisdom of the right hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr Clarke), who made an excellent point about development education. I hope the project that our schools go through every summer, Send My Friend to School, spreads to parents, because the children’s enthusiasm for the agenda is an example to us all. I thank the right hon.”
“Given that unemployment is at over 40%, nearly 60% of people have no secure access to food and three quarters have no access to safe water, 19,000 people still reside in United Nations Relief and Works Agency shelters, and 100,000 have been rendered homeless, the situation is dire.”
“The Gaza reconstruction mechanism, in which we have invested heavily, had a faltering start and only 46 truck-loads were delivered in October. We are now up to 302 as of the beginning of this month. It is not good enough, and we are working for more, but it is the only game in town.”
“We contributed £500,000 to the implementation of the mechanism, and the Australians have paid for the software, in order to ensure, by agreement with the Israeli Government, the Palestinian Authority and the UN, that no building materials would be misappropriated.”
“My recollection is that we take this matter very seriously indeed with respect to—sorry, I have misappropriated the question. [Interruption.] I apologise, Mr Speaker Boko Haram can only be defeated by action by the Nigerian Government on a security front and on a development front and by provision of leadership. We in DFID have doubled our programme of investment in the north-east of Nigeria and are working to that end.”
“We take that report very seriously indeed. Human rights abuses exacerbate insurgencies. I can give my hon. Friend that assurance that we do not fund or support in any way the security forces that are responsible for those actions. Indeed, our programme of Justice for All—J4A—ensures that all Nigerians can have access to better justice and human rights.”
“We have a deepening democracy fund through which we are providing support for those elections next year. With respect to the advance of Government forces, we are providing intelligence and direct tactical training to the Nigerian army. The elections themselves must be a matter for the Nigerians, but we are providing the funding and the technical support.”
“We are increasing our spend in northern Nigeria. Indeed, 60% of our spend in Nigeria is in the north-eastern areas, so I can give my hon. Friend that assurance.”
“Of the girls who were abducted in Chibok, 219 remain missing. Since then another 300 have been abducted elsewhere. We are providing a joint intelligence cell, together with our allies in France, the United States and Nigeria, based in Abuja, and all the technical assistance that we can give.”
“We are providing support for small and medium-sized enterprises and micro-businesses across our areas of responsibility, because they contribute so much to both employment and economic development.”
“We have provided some 29 million women with access to financial services, and we are supporting the provision of some £26 billion in commercial loans to some 50,000 businesses led by women. Last year at the conference we announced that we would provide support for mentoring for 100 women across north Africa.”
“Government policy is that all businesses, particularly small businesses, should pay a living wage, but first they have to generate wealth and entrepreneurs have to begin to provide for businesses before they can pay any wages at all.”
“I have looked into that criticism; the EU denies that it happened, and it has checked in Monrovia. I have asked for that matter to be reinvestigated.”