Ann McKechin MP spoke to the debate on Global Poverty in the House of Commons on 1 July 2010
Ann McKechin (Glasgow North) (Lab): May I begin by welcoming to the House the hon. Member for Wirral West (Esther McVey)? She gave a very confident and lucid speech, and raised the very pertinent issue of how the vision of children can often inspire us to consider some of the greater global problems that we face.
As the right hon. Member for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce) correctly said earlier, the environment for a debate on development is very different from what it was five years ago, when we had the Make Poverty History protest in Edinburgh. Obviously, we are facing much greater economic pressures domestically, but the two problems are not separate. Increasingly, our future is bound to that of the developing south, in an age of growing volatility.
The millennium development goals must remain at the heart of our policy direction and development. I welcome the new Government's commitment to the MDG process and the 0.7% target, but many of us would be much more comforted if we had a more settled timetable for passing binding legislation to achieve that. In increasingly difficult times, the issue of ring-fencing will be coming under pressure, and it is important that all sides retain support.
However, I also think that this is a time to look back and reflect on how we can sustain and improve performance in respect of the MDG targets. I believe that we need to move away from a narrow focus on technical intervention and move to a focus on supporting citizens' ability to exercise their rights. Our overarching philosophy should be that poverty is not inevitable. We should not believe that aid in its current form should be a permanent fixture in world affairs; rather, we should believe that it is the means to help countries out of dependency and to empower them to tackle their national problems by their own means.
As I have argued before in this House, I believe that one area of poverty that does not receive sufficient priority is employment. Globally, more than 1 billion people are currently unemployed, under-employed or working poor. As populations in the developing world continue to escalate, global official unemployment has now reached a record high of over 185 million.
Nearly half that total are people under 24 years of age, yet younger people represent only a quarter of the working-age population. That problem may well get worse in the coming decade, when young people will make up the highest ever proportion of the world's population. Currently, there are 1.5 billion people aged between 12 and 24, of whom 1.3 billion live in the south. It is estimated that, due to the global recession of the last few years, 64 million more people worldwide will fall into extreme poverty this year alone. If we do not wish the progress on the MDGs to recede, we need to give employment a much greater priority at every level.
Increasing urbanisation in poor nations is exacerbating the problem, as more and more people are concentrated in shanty towns, often without access to basic utilities and at increased risk of disease, abuse and marginalisation. Obviously, that can lead to increasing domestic political instability, with little enforceable domestic security. It also provides the perfect environment for human trafficking and other forms of criminal activity, such as drugs and arms trading, the consequences of which we can see in every town and city in Europe. We face not only global bank and debt crises, but a global unemployment crisis, both at home and abroad, but too often in their language and responses, our world leaders fail to place employment at the core of their priorities.
Now is exactly the right time to revive world trade talks, and I welcome the Secretary of State's comments on the Doha round. We must not bury trade talks or pander to protectionist instincts. This time, we need to ensure that the talks focus on creating jobs rather than on increasing corporate profits. The UK is one of the leading international donors, and should use its influence at both bilateral and multilateral levels to promote investment in job-rich industries and services, and to make a decent work agenda a core factor in its support for private sector development. Trade agreements must not signal a race to the bottom in terms of income, and they need to be accompanied by firmer agreement on minimum labour standards.
However, another reason why getting greater numbers into the formal economy is important is that we want to create a permanent, stable tax base, which is a key element in reducing dependency on aid. In a world that is changing rapidly-politically, economically and environmentally-we can anticipate greater periods of turbulence, higher food and energy prices, water depletion, fish depletion, and deforestation. Demand growth is accelerating, and the World Bank estimates that food production will need to increase by close to 50% between 2000 to 2030. Increasingly, a nation's resilience in the face of disruption will mark its ability to survive successfully. Those of us who live in richer nations have distinct advantages: strong states, an ability to harness sophisticated technology and highly skilled citizens. To differing degrees, developing countries lack many such advantages, and accordingly have much higher levels of vulnerability.
If the ambitions of the MDGs are to bear fruit, it is important to protect the advances that have already been made before we seek further progress on the targets. Despite the fact that we have made considerable progress since 2000, those who have been taken above absolute poverty remain very close to the threshold. They live in emerging economies, so they are subject to much more pressure and are more vulnerable, and there is a very high risk that they will go back into absolute poverty.
Increasingly, we need to consider innovative ways in which to improve resilience and sustain the improvements that have been made. Rather than focusing only on developing basic public services, we need to consider how wealth can be redistributed within societies to achieve social progress, how the voice of the poor can be properly recognised, and how democracy, and thus the accountability of Governments to their citizens, can increase. All three elements are vital to progress on the MDGs.
Christian Aid recently made two specific calls in respect of taxation to aid a fairer distribution. I hope that when he responds, the Minister can provide an assurance that the Government support multilateral, automatic exchange of tax information between tax jurisdictions, so that we can better tackle the pernicious impact of tax havens, and a new international accounting standard that requires corporations to report on profits that they have made in every country where they operate. Those two measures will not cost the UK taxpayer a penny, but they could make a real and substantial difference to millions of the world's poorest. I am sure that they would pass the Secretary of State's value-for-money test.
I should like briefly to address gender. Sadly, it is no surprise that MDG 5, on maternal mortality, is the most off track. Women account for 70% of the world's poor, and because they face systematic discrimination, their opportunities to escape poverty are correspondingly fewer. The interlinked problems of high fertility rates and maternal mortality continue to impede economic and social development. The underlying causes of high fertility, morbidity and mortality are not lack of contraception, blood loss and infection, but rather, as the right hon. Member for Gordon correctly said, apathy and a lack of respect for women and their fundamental rights. One symptom of that is that the data on women and girls are patchy. Key statistics, for example, are available only in about one quarter of developing nations. That in turn leads to women's concerns being given low political priority and to a lack of impetus to change.
I believe that the UK should continue to be at the forefront of working with others to press for voluntary family planning that is universally accessible, and I welcome the Secretary of State's comments this afternoon, but we also need to prioritise support for social and legal measures that stem the widespread practice of early marriage of young girls in many parts of the developing world. For a number of reasons, we in the west have shied away from this issue, but it is fundamental. It goes without saying that getting girls into school is important, but if we simply rely on primary education for success rather than the full range of secondary and tertiary education, we will not make much change.
Sixty per cent. of the world's out-of-school children are girls, and they are less likely to progress to secondary and tertiary education as a result. Children of mothers who can read themselves are likely to achieve significantly higher results and accordingly continue their education longer. Tackling illiteracy, particularly among girls and women needs to have priority if we are going to give women better opportunities. We also need to give greater support to initiatives to encourage girls to continue their education and address the cultural barriers to female employment. Currently, 82 million girls in developing nations who are now aged 10 to 17 will be married before their 18th birthday. Where the birth rate in countries has fallen, between 25% and 40% of economic growth is attributable to demographic changes. Tackling those issues would bring fundamental and permanent improvement to the rights of women and tackle the millennium development goals on which we are most lagging behind.
What we need most in the year to follow is political will of the type that saw the birth of the MDGs and was prepared to look not just at the latest emergency but at how we want the world to be in the next 10 to 15 years. The outcome of the G20 summit last week was disappointing for development; there is no doubt about that. We need the UK Government to provide continued leadership in the tough times as well as the good. September's summit gives us an opportunity, and I hope that it will be grasped. |
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