Sustainable Development Goals — House of Commons, 2019-06-11
Topic: International Affairs
Christopher Murray Alexander Law (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): Indeed, on the issue of plastics, the environment and the climate, we share common views throughout the House, and I am of course happy to reflect that, as well as the great work that Tearfund has done As the Select Committee stated in its letter to the Secretary of State in April, given that the UK signed up to achieve the SDGs in 2015, nearly four years ago, the current situation just is not good enough. It is becoming increasingly clear that, given the all-encompassing nature of the SDGs, DFID is not the Department most suited to ensuring that they are embedded in everything that the Government do. We cannot afford not to take the SDGs seriously and instead to treat the whole process as a box-ticking exercise that can be forgotten about once the VNR has been and gone We have a unique opportunity to eradicate poverty, reduce inequalities, combat catastrophic climate change and protect our natural environment by 2030. We simply cannot pick and choose which goals are important to us and which ones we can disregard. Sadly, it does not appear that the UK Government have used the opportunity of the VNR to make the SDGs better known in the UK or to take their own responsibilities more seriously. For example, in a letter on 6 June, firms and charities called for the Government to promote international development through their international trade policy. If the UK wants to do that, it should follow France’s example and call for the USA to return to the Paris agreement before it starts any trade talks Instead, in the same week, we saw the UK Government roll out the red carpet to President Trump, a climate change denier, in a desperate attempt to secure a trade deal, with anything up for grabs Going forward, it is expected that the Prime Minister will attend the first four-yearly Heads of State meeting on the sustainable development goals at the UN General Assembly in September. Should that Prime Minister be the current Secretary of State for International Development, I would welcome hearing whatever he is likely to say in September. Of course, as of yet, we have no idea who that Prime Minister will be. Although the Secretary of State understands that we face, in his own words, a climate cataclysm and would like to double the amount that DFID spends on climate and the environment, sadly the same cannot be said of several of the other candidates also vying to become Prime Minister One candidate endorsed a report that recommended that the UK should spend 0.7% of its income on aid only if it "gains the freedom to define aid as it sees fit." He also said that aid spending should be used in the UK’s "political, commercial and diplomatic interests" and called to change the Department’s purpose from poverty reduction to furthering "the nation’s overall strategic goals." Another candidate has spoken of her desire to halve the UK’s overseas aid budget and abandon the UK’s commitment to the UN target of spending 0.7% of national income on aid. When I saw that on "The Andrew Marr Show" on Sunday morning, my chin literally bounced off the kitchen table. Although the Government will cherry-pick their examples of progress on the SDGs in this debate today, it has been evident that their implementation of the sustainable development goals has been shambolic and the future could be bleaker should some in the Conservative party get their way In conclusion, I would like to quote Richard Curtis, film writer and director responsible for films such as "Four Weddings and a Funeral", "Bridget Jones’s Diary", and "Love Actually". Importantly, he was in front of the International Development Committee today, because he is also UN advocate for the SDGs and co-founder of Project Everyone and Comic Relief. He summed up precisely what needs to be done by this UK Government when he said: "The UK is reputed for campaigns such as Live Aid and Band Aid"— those of us in this Chamber who are old enough, which is most of us, will probably remember them— "as well as Make Poverty History, yet what we need is one person who is thinking about this all the time. We need real leadership." Whoever becomes Prime Minister next month, they need to learn the lessons of the UK’s implementation of the SDGs so far. We are nearly one third of the way from the adoption in 2015 to the target date of 2030. I urge the UK Government to use the VNR to mark the beginning of a more thorough and serious approach to implementing the sustainable development goals—a starting point with proper leadership and proper cross-departmental engagement—and to look at some of the examples that I have mentioned and that have been demonstrated by the Scottish Government.