Sustainable Development Goals — House of Commons, 2015-09-10
Topic: International Affairs
Stephen Phillips (Conservative, Centre-right): FGM is, in a sense, part of the sustainable development goals. It is an abhorrent practice, and this Government and previous Governments have done what they can to change the law here to ensure that we stamp it out as much as we can. I know from my own questions to Ministers in the last Parliament and in this one that it is an important issue for this Government. The whole House agrees not only that FGM is an important issue but that it needs to be eradicated The strength of the millennium development goals was their clarity—their ability not only to focus minds and action but to communicate clearly what the world sought to achieve and by when. We set out to reduce extreme poverty by half, and by this year more than 700 million people will no longer live on less than $1.25 a day. We set out to eliminate the disparity in primary school enrolment between boys and girls, and we have done just that. The world also set out to tackle HIV, malaria and a host of other diseases, on which incredible progress has been made, despite my own bout of dengue last year In 2030, however, when I rise to challenge the Government of the day on the progress that has been made—I give notice now that I fully intend to do just that in 15 years’ time—will it be as clear, given the more amorphous terms of the sustainable development goals, that we have progressed as much? I hope it will—no doubt the whole House does—but I have my doubts that it will be as easy to show that we have made real achievements in tackling the root causes of the problems that do so much to impoverish the lives of many across the developing world and keep them in poverty No doubt we will have made real achievements by then, but the problem with international development that, at least until the last few weeks, all Members will have encountered is that it is often difficult to explain to constituents not only what we are doing but that those actions are having a real effect and benefiting all of us here just as much as they benefit those whose lives we are seeking to make better. This country spends—as it must now do legally and, I add, morally—0.7% of our gross national income on international development, yet how many of us are challenged again and again over that figure and over the value for money it delivers, particularly in times of necessary austerity in the public finances? For many, it is not enough that we are doing the right thing; we need to show that what we are doing delivers value for money and security for this country My right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) understood this problem when he was Secretary of State. The fact that we have not only delivered our international obligation in relation to the 0.7%, when so many others have not, but also begun to communicate the effectiveness and importance of DFID’s spending in this area to a sometimes sceptical public owes much to the work that he did in transforming the agenda and lifting DFID from the shadows to become a Department that is properly seen as being partly responsible for the security of this country and its standing in the world. As I am sure the Minister will accept, we would not be where we are but for my right hon. Friend, nor would the Department have been able to deliver what it has delivered in negotiating the sustainable development goals and ensuring that the final draft that has emerged from three years of hard work will achieve as much as I believe it will Before closing and affording others the opportunity to express their own views as we move towards the point at which the goals will be adopted in New York later this month, I want to say a word or two about data and about money. I have already mentioned that, assuming the goals are adopted in New York, progress and compliance in relation to the goals is to be measured by reference to 169 targets and 304 indicators. Ensuring familiarity with those targets and indicators among non-governmental organisations, Government Departments, donors, recipients and others will represent a challenge on a scale for which the international development community is perhaps ill prepared The education of policy makers and those who implement their decisions will be critical, as will the resourcing of developing countries in particular, not just to educate those who need to carry out the work but to enable robust data to be collected routinely and in a manner that permits easy utilisation. Too often in developing countries, donors and the United Nations require data in different formats that are either absent or incapable of collection at least in the form in which they are sought. Too often, data that have already been provided are sought again and again, even if in slightly different ways, because the churn of staff within NGOs and donors means that everyone has their own way of working and measuring success against the indicators to which they are working This is an issue on which DFID, as a world leader, has a particular role to play. Insofar as it can properly be done, standardising data collection and sets across the international development community would not only enable progress on the sustainable development goals to be more transparent and easily communicable but free up the time of civil servants and others who are too frequently found tearing their hair out trying to find substitute markers for data for which they are being asked but to which they have no access. I would like to hear from the Minister that he and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will look into this agenda and make progress on it after the adoption of the goals. As I know from my own travels across the developing world, and across Africa in particular, that would do a great deal to help Then there is the question of money. It is unacceptable, given the commitments made by the richest countries in the world, that so many are still failing to meet the 0.7% target set at the Gleneagles summit. We have met that target, and I have little doubt that the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary would agree that we have pulled our weight, yet we remain the only major developed economy that has done so. As I have repeatedly said, doing so ensures our own safety and security and those of our allies, and they need to pull their weight too.