Access To Safer Water In The Developing World

International Development

19-Mar-2008

Mr. Michael Moore (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (LD): May I be the latest in the line to congratulate the hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) on his impressive leadership on this issue and the fact that he has secured this debate today? In doing so, he has allowed us the opportunity to reflect on one of the biggest challenges that the world faces and one of the most important issues that we, as a rich developed country, must tackle, and we must help others to tackle it, too.

The hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire set out at great length the underlying problems that many people face; I hope that I do not repeat too many of the statistics that he quoted, but some of them bear repeating. He was right to remind us of the gulf between the privileged position that we enjoy in the Palace of Westminster, where water is literally on tap to us for every need and every whim, and the harsh realities of the everyday lives of millions of people around the world.

I also pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Oxford, East (Mr. Smith), who rightly highlighted the work that Oxfam has done. Many other organisations, including NGOs, are also active in this field, but we understand why Oxfam plays such an important part in his view. Like the Ministers to whom he referred, about a year or so ago, I visited Oxfam’s headquarters, which is a truly spectacular set-up. It is a symbol, I suppose, of Oxfam’s breadth and reach and, as the right hon. Member pointed out, of the important contribution that Oxfam makes in so many different areas.

Without getting sidetracked, may I also endorse the observations of the right hon. Member for Oxford, East about Gaza? Although most of the comments today will be focused on the crisis in sub-Saharan Africa, the situation in Gaza is truly appalling, as we have said in so many debates in the House recently. It seems likely that the Minister will have a generous amount of time to reply to this debate, and I hope that he will take some time to address the points that have been made about Gaza. I have been pressing the Secretary of State for International Development and other Ministers in correspondence about the extent to which they regard Israel’s response to the issues in Gaza as proportionate. I invite the Minister today to address that subject, including the comments of the right hon. Member for Oxford, East.

My hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) has put things in very dramatic terms, and he is right to do so. For all the intellectual humour that there may have been at Mr. Malthus’s expense over the centuries, my hon. Friend is right to remind us of the basic prediction that Malthus was making and the problems that we may yet have to laugh on the other side of our face about.

Although I do not accept every aspect of what my hon. Friend said about the role of the private sector, he is right to highlight some of the dangers of private sector involvement. It is important that we strike the right balance. We must get the private sector expertise, initiative and input into tackling problems like the lack of access to safe water and sanitation, but we must not tie developing countries in such a way that they are beholden to the profit motive rather than what is absolutely their first priority: ensuring that they get the access to the water and other resources that they need.

Like the hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire, I pay tribute to the staff of Samaritan’s Purse, particularly Simon Barrington, Matt Bird and the many others who have been instrumental in bringing Parliament’s attention to this issue. As you will know, Mr. Hood, MPs are inundated by invitations to meet groups and organisations, both small and large, from constituents and many others. It takes a special kind of organisation and a special kind of issue to create a stand-out moment that one remembers. Meeting the guys from Samaritan’s Purse a few weeks ago, I was immediately impressed both by what they are trying to do as an organisation and, even more crucially, by the fact that they were not puffing their own organisation but focusing on this issue. Through speaking to them and subsequent research, I, for one, have learned a great deal more about the issue, and I am absolutely sure that they are right to expend so much energy on it.

Again like the hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire, I pay tribute to those who joined us yesterday on what was thankfully a fairly modest walk. It took place in reasonably clement conditions; they were a bit chillier than we might have expected and a world away from the temperature that the people of sub-Saharan Africa must cope with day in, day out. The walk, from Parliament square to Hyde park, was a good opportunity for us to reflect on what is a daily responsibility for people in many parts of the world.

MPs and Church leaders went on the walk, but I, too, was very impressed by the teachers and particularly the children of All Soul’s primary school. It is clearly a school that has a very outward-looking focus. I asked the children about what was exciting them at the moment, and they were still full of happy memories of a recent visit to a farm in Wales, which had obviously opened their eyes to very early starts in the morning and to some different realities of life here in Britain. More broadly, however, they were very seized of the issue that we were highlighting yesterday by that walk. We were all grateful when we reached Hyde park that, although there were quite a lot of water containers, there was not one each, so we were able to understand a little of the issue without having to endure all the discomfort and physical pain that would go with making such a walk regularly. Perish the thought that we might have to carry what we as individuals use on this estate every day.

“Turn on the Tap”, Samaritan’s Purse and many other organisations and campaigns are focusing on this issue and drawing particular attention to the walks that will take place around the country on 10 May. I hope that there will be a lot of support then for the different Church organisations and other organisations across the United Kingdom that are participating in this year’s efforts. It is fundamentally important that we, in all our communities across the United Kingdom, are conscious of this issue and do our bit, both to raise awareness and to make a material difference to the lives of people across the world.

We have already heard many of the statistics. None the less, the fact that 1.1 billion people live without access to safe water is something that we should not tolerate. Parliamentary convention requires us to be moderate in our tone in how we conduct these debates, and quite right too, Mr. Hood; I do not intend to challenge that convention. However, the “Turn on the Tap” website quite rightly says that the fact that 1.1 billion people do not have access to safe water is an outrage. We need to get an element of that outrage into the way that we think about the problem that we are trying to tackle.

Hon. Members have already mentioned the millennium development goal, and I am sure that the hon. Member for North-East Milton Keynes (Mr. Lancaster), who is the Conservative shadow Minister for International Development, and the Minister himself will reflect on that goal, too, in due course. Although, as others have said, we are in danger of failing to meet that target, we must remember that it is not to eradicate the problem or to ensure that everyone has access to clean water, but to halve the number of people without access to it. Even if we meet that target, therefore, we will still be only part of the way towards eradicating this terrible problem, and we must not lose sight of that. Not meeting that relatively modest target would therefore be a real failure.

We are talking not just about one development goal; it is interlinked with many others. Indeed, I am sure that a case can be made for each of the millennium development goals to be linked to this issue, because if we are serious about reducing child mortality, promoting better maternal health and achieving universal primary education, we must ensure that people have access to safe water—the issue must be right up there and it needs to be ticked off as having been achieved. As the kids yesterday showed us, taking a few hours out of the day to go and collect water means that people are in no position to study or to lift themselves out of poverty. We must therefore see the issue in the round.

At the same time that we are trying to tackle these issues, we are also fighting the huge problem of climate change. As we try to mitigate the worst effects of bad sanitation and poor access to water, global warming is making the problem more acute—not just in the obvious sense that it is warmer, but because the weather is being disrupted, thus threatening what predictable sources exist. Sadly, water and access to it are increasingly a source of conflict, as we see in Gaza and parts of Africa. We can quickly get into a vicious spiral, moving further away from our goals, rather than closer to them. The developed world has of course pledged to meet the millennium development goals, which are a wonderful focus for us all, as we seek to reach a point where we are no longer ashamed by the fact that so many people go hungry and do without water and so much else. The European Union has had its water initiative in previous years, and the World Bank has been financing a huge range of projects across the globe through the International Development Association. In recognising the need to speed up our achievement of the development goals that we are talking about, the Government have been central to the call for action, and I hope that the Minister will continue to use that call as a focal point for all countries in the European Union and elsewhere to encourage them to recognise the centrality of those goals.

DFID has increased its funding in this area, and I, like others, pay tribute to the Government for that. How have they used the increased funding during the current year and how will they achieve their target of doubling expenditure by the end of 2011? Increasingly, particularly on health—we debated the international health partnerships in this Chamber a couple of weeks ago—we are looking at how we can focus different channels of aid and assistance through one programme or another to minimise the bureaucracy and ineffectiveness of some of the existing methods of delivery. Does the Minister see some scope for greater co-ordination and focus on the issue?

The hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire talked about how much we learned from yesterday’s walk, and I repeat his point that it was a humbling experience not only to learn so much from the children who took part, but to reflect on why we were taking the trouble to walk four miles on just one day, as opposed to every day of our lives, and not in the conditions that so many others experience. Like the hon. Gentleman, I urge people in my constituency and in others up and down the land to support the “Turn on the Tap” initiative, not only on 10 May, but in the following weeks, months and years. We should never lose sight of the fact there is an outrage at the root of this issue, and we must do something about it.

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