The below Parliamentary question was asked by Gareth Thomas on 2014-05-13.
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how many officials of his Department are working on the Sir John Holmes’ independent medal review; and if he will make a statement.
Anna Soubry
It has not proved possible to respond to the hon. Member in the time available before Prorogation.
The tribute made by Gareth Thomas, the Labour MP for Harrow West, in the House of Commons on 10 September 2022.
It is a privilege to have the opportunity to rise in this debate to pay tribute to Her Majesty the Queen on my own behalf but also, particularly importantly, on behalf of my constituents. The Queen was a remarkable monarch, loved and admired, as many in this House have underlined, across our great country and across the world. As a result, I have not been surprised by the depth, warmth and sheer volume of heartfelt messages that my constituents have shared about her life and their sense of loss at her passing.
Harrow was the first borough created by the Queen after her coronation in 1953—that is probably the most important of the many reasons why we have been the most important part of London ever since. She visited our borough many times, and she made many school visits, in particular. She also came to celebrate the borough’s golden jubilee in 2004, and she was always enormously well received.
Like others, I had the privilege of meeting the Queen on a couple of occasions. As a new Member of Parliament, I met her at a reception in Buckingham Palace for young achievers, which is probably the nearest I have ever come to being a rising star. I also met her as a Minister in the Foreign Office. What was obvious on that occasion, and in the many conversations I had with Ministers across the Commonwealth and the globe, was the enormous respect in which she was held. Her quiet work, receiving and meeting diplomats and the leaders of the countries with which our country needed to engage, was always enormously well received and hugely important. Many of my constituents—those who have links to India and Pakistan, or links across east Africa, to Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda, in particular, or across west Africa, such as those with a background in Ghana, or those who have a background in the Caribbean—talk of their immense respect for her, but also of the immense respect of their families and relations back home.
The Queen’s was a remarkable life—70 years of phenomenal public service as our monarch. Her skills, her constancy and her considerable diplomatic efforts helped underline and enhance the greatness of our country. The warmth of the tributes from leaders across the globe, the Commonwealth and Europe, and indeed from the President of the United States, have only underlined her importance to our country. God save the Queen, and God save the King.
The speech made by Gareth Thomas, the Labour MP for Harrow West, in the House of Commons on 6 July 2022.
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin), and I will come on to her point about soft power in a moment. I join others in congratulating the Chair of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), on securing the debate. I also join them in stressing just how wrong-headed the abolition of the Department for International Development was, as was the decision to cut development funding to just 0.5% of our national income, which was an act of self-harm just as much as it was an act of harm to the developing world.
Beyond our moral responsibility, as one of the richest nations in the world, to help the very poorest in the world, there is surely also a strong national, domestic set of reasons for rethinking our approach to international development, which covid and refugees risking their lives to cross the channel have helped to underscore. I entirely understand the argument that our constituents’ needs must always come first, particularly in the middle of a cost of living crisis, but whether or not to give aid to countries overseas is not a binary choice. I would also gently say in passing that the choice would be even easier if the Treasury had not wasted billions of pounds on covid loans that should never have been given.
As the hon. Member for West Worcestershire said, it is in Britain’s national interests to build up our soft power, just as it is important to have real military power to call on in the very worst of times. Soft power comes from our global trade and business links; from the work of our universities; from our cultural institutions, such as the BBC, other parts of the media and the British Council; from the quality of the work our diplomats do in the Foreign Office; and, crucially, from the quality of the development support and leadership we provide.
If aid is used well in other countries, that helps our country too. For example, better police forces in other countries help to limit the potential impact of overseas criminality here. Better health services in developing countries help to prevent the spread of disease—think Ebola—to UK shores. Better opportunities for higher standards of living in developing countries help to reduce people’s reasons for taking perilous trips to start new lives in countries such as ours. And better governance, as well as efforts to support peace and build stable countries, helps to prevent conflicts and reduce the numbers of refugees needing to travel to more stable countries.
Then there are the even more intangible benefits of development assistance and other examples of soft power. If we are seen to help the world’s poorest for the best of reasons in countries that are not as rich as ours, doors open for other parts of our Government and for players in the business world, on whom our economic success depends. So there is a strong moral case for aid, but the self-interested case for aid is also powerful.
I gently say to Ministers that it is a mistake to have axed the Department for International Development. By the time I joined the Department as a Minister in 2003, it was already world leading. It was held in considerable regard across the developing world and on the world’s great stages at the United Nations and the G8. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) said much more eloquently than I can, the talent of the Department’s officials was stunning and striking. I digress briefly to acknowledge the passing recently of one excellent official I worked with, Danny Graymore, who did some remarkable work on access to medicines. He was rightly recognised for his service to our country and to development.
The calibre of the Department’s Secretaries of State was beyond question. We had the remarkable Clare Short, the excellent noble Lady Valerie Amos, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central and Douglas Alexander. The Department had clear and obvious support from Prime Ministers and Chancellors of the Exchequer, certainly from 1997 to 2010 and, to be fair, in the first years of the Conservative party’s time in government. I say in passing that I hope I managed not to do too much damage to the Department’s reputation while I was there.
Between 1997 and 2010, Britain helped to lift almost 50 million people out of poverty and initiated a huge programme of debt relief. My right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) made a powerful point about the need for a new programme of debt relief; if only there was someone in this Government with the imagination to lead such an effort.
Navendu Mishra (Stockport) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Several whistleblowers have revealed that there was chaos and a failure of leadership at the newly formed Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office when the merger between the Foreign Office and DFID took place, and particularly during the fall of Kabul in Afghanistan. The leadership was distracted by the merger, senior DFID staff were unable to access FCDO systems, and that meant that support on the ground for our staff members was poor. Does my hon. Friend agree that this Government prioritise a political response rather than humanitarian support for people on the ground?
Gareth Thomas
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, and it will be good to hear the Minister’s response to that. I will certainly make some brief remarks about Afghanistan and the plight of the people there.
I was just mentioning the difference that the Department for International Development made and could potentially make again. We helped to get 40 million more children into school in the 13 years the Department was run by the Labour party. Polio was on the verge of being eradicated thanks to the vaccination programmes we funded across the world, particularly in countries such as India and Pakistan. Having initiated the strategy, I am particularly proud that more than 3 million more people were able to access life-preserving HIV and AIDS drugs in countries such as Malawi and Zambia, as you will remember only too well, Madam Deputy Speaker.
We improved water and sanitation services for more than 1.5 million people. We invested in better maternity and family planning services in countries such as Nepal. When earthquakes and other disasters struck, we led the way in improving the humanitarian conditions of those hit—in Sri Lanka after the tsunami, for example, or in Pakistan after the earthquake in Kashmir.
Other major countries, including the US, Germany, France, Japan and Norway, have separate Departments providing aid on the one hand and doing the hard yards on diplomacy on the other. The skillsets required of our diplomats and our development experts are very different. Development experts are focused on ensuring our aid goes where it needs to go to make a real difference, while our diplomats are rightly push a range of UK Government priorities to their counterparts.
The relentless focus the Department for International Development placed on its poverty reduction mission put it centre stage. The fact that that aid did not appear conditional on backing Britain all the time made our presence and our money even more welcome and, as a result, made the access and influence of our diplomats that little bit greater. It is striking that Ministers have offered little rigorous rationale for the merger. Frankly, the sooner both that and the cut in aid are reversed, the better.
I want to challenge the Minister gently on why governance is no longer part of the priorities for our aid spending. I think of the funding we provided before 2010 to help developing countries invest in better statistics collection services. That may not sound particularly important in the context of huge hunger or education needs, but without the ability to collect statistics about what is happening on the ground in a country we cannot make good decisions about the allocation of resources, work out where to send the next tranche of money to make a real difference or hold politicians and Governments to account. We need governance efforts in these countries that help to target corruption by funding the equivalent of the National Audit Office or the Public Accounts Committee; to support independent media to hold politicians to account; to bring to light the examples of corruption and to get rid of people from politics who are serving their own interests rather than the interests of the people; and to help to train high-quality civil servants so that instead of relying on NGOs or overseas aid, they can run things in their country for themselves. At my most naive, I want a world where aid and NGOs are not needed, but for that ambition to come just a little bit closer, we need to help countries to build effective Parliaments and effective Governments with great civil servants so that they can provide services to every community in every corner of their country. We should seek to back good governance and prioritise that as part of our aid strategy going forward.
Other speakers have mentioned the cuts in funding to the global multilateral system. I echo the comments about support for the global fund. I hope the Minister will be able to give Members in all parts of the House an assurance that that will be appropriately backed at the coming pledging conference. We are seeing cuts in funding to the global multilateral system at a time when there is so much need, and when we need honest brokers in the UN system to co-ordinate humanitarian relief and tackle the provision of support for hunger and poverty. That has never been more needed than now. It is a hugely retrograde step to cut by so much the funding to the World Bank, the African Development Bank, the United Nations Development Programme, and so on. Indeed, when Ministers made those decisions, they went against their own review of multilaterals, which found that funding through multilaterals delivers more bang for our collective buck and reduces administrative costs to the taxpayer.
I want to make some specific points about countries that are of interest to my constituents. We have cut our bilateral funding to Pakistan by some 57% from about £463 million in 2016 to about £200 million a couple of years ago. Even two and a half years ago, Pakistan had the second highest numbers of refugees in the world, placing huge pressure on the country and the systems in place there. Given what happened in Afghanistan just 10 months ago, the pressures on Pakistan are even greater, with powerful challenges in terms of food insecurity, getting good-quality education, economic empowerment, and good family planning and other health services. It would be good to hear a clear rationale from the Minister for such a huge cut in funding.
Nepal and Sri Lanka are also, for different reasons, facing huge challenges in making progress towards the SDGs. Due to climate change, too many people in Nepal have had to leave the country for much of the year to go to India or other countries to seek work. It is therefore crucial to do as much as we can to help economic empowerment in Nepal. My right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) briefly alluded to Sri Lanka, with which a huge number of my constituents have very close connections. If ever there was a country that has made the case for a greater programme of debt relief—I echo his point, too, about China as the lender of last resort—it is Sri Lanka. There are huge human rights and governance concerns in Sri Lanka, as my Tamil and Muslim constituents know only too well, but it is striking that all the peoples of Sri Lanka are suffering hunger, loss of jobs, and real wage insecurity. I wonder whether, in the short term, the Department needs to be doing more to help the people of Sri Lanka.
Lastly, on Africa, the move away from aid being used for poverty reduction is perhaps the most striking thing in the tilt towards the Indo-Pacific. In my Front-Bench role, I have been struck by how a series of businesses have argued that Africa is where Asia was 10 to 15 years ago. Some countries have very fast developing economies, and some countries are making huge efforts on the quality of their governance. It therefore surely makes even less sense to be withdrawing aid and withdrawing our influence in Africa when our business community is beginning to look with such interest at its prospects in Africa. I am not advocating for tied aid—absolutely not—but the more we resume strong soft power and strong influence in Africa, the more down the line we can help our businesses win contracts in Africa and help to create jobs, too.
I end by urging the next Government to rethink their approach to the abolition of the Department for International Development. It needs re-establishing quickly, and we need to move quickly back to 0.7% of our national income being spent on aid.
The speech made by Gareth Thomas, the Labour MP for Harrow West, in the House of Commons on 16 March 2021.
I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to establish a presumption in public sector procurement in favour of purchasing goods and services from businesses based in the UK; to require the Secretary of State to publish data on the value of Government contracts awarded to such businesses, and estimates of jobs created as a result, by region and nation; to make provision for a kitemark scheme for goods of predominantly UK origin; and for connected purposes.
Ministers could and should do more to help British firms win British Government contracts. After more than 10 years of this Government in power, too often the best British companies are ignored when Ministers give out contracts. This is about jobs, and how quickly Britain emerges from recession. It is about the huge social value that Government can create for our constituents, and the stability for families and new career opportunities when procurement is done with imagination.
The Conservative party’s handling of covid and lockdown has made the economic damage, never mind the cost in lives and health, so much worse. One extra measure that Ministers could take to speed the recovery is to encourage consumers to buy local, to buy British, and they should start with Whitehall.
The PPE scandal law year saw British firm after British firm that was offering to make personal protection equipment ignored. Only those who had the mobile number of a Minister or two had the chance to win a lucrative contract. Time after time, British manufacturers, often on the doorstep of the very hospitals and care homes where staff were crying out for more PPE, struggled to get doors in Whitehall to open for them. Many were firms that because of covid were having to look for new products and new markets to keep staff employed. As the National Audit Office has set out, Ministers spent £12.5 billion on PPE that one year earlier would have cost just £2.5 billion. There was, without doubt, a huge scramble to secure PPE, but our country ended up buying equipment that was five times, or £10 billion, more expensive than the year before. If more British manufacturers had been helped to win PPE contracts, Ministers might have got better value and now have the money to spend on proper pay rises for NHS staff.
Contracts with overseas firms led to the extraordinary situation of much hailed deliveries of PPE from China and Turkey ending up being paid for, but not all used. Huge contracts were given to overseas firms such as the Miami-based Saiger jewellery company, and who can forget the Spanish businessman paid vast sums to be the middleman, ultimately by British taxpayers? All the while, local firms employing our constituents were missing out. As Make UK, Britain’s lead manufacturing body, made clear at the time, lots of firms that work with textiles and are used to working with plastics were extremely keen to help, registered on the relevant Government website and, all too often, then heard very little. Thirty-six British companies went as far as contacting Labour Members to make it clear that they had offered to help and had been ignored.
What is striking too is that many of these firms were based outside London and the south-east—for example, the Birmingham firm that offered to supply a quarter of a million aprons and masks, or the company further north, in Ripon, that could have provided 100,000 face visors per week. Some British firms that offered to help and revealed the source of their supplies discovered deals were done directly with their overseas supplier rather than with them. Indeed, in a scathing report last year on the PPE scandal, the National Audit Office found that just 12% of all PPE ordered by the Government supply chain between February and July came from UK manufacturers. If even at a time of national crisis, when the need for basic supplies was on the front page of every newspaper and running on every news bulletin, British companies’ offers of help were not getting through, it is difficult not to wonder what on earth it must be like for British businesses that want to offer their products and services to Government when there is not a national crisis happening.
Ministers made a series of claims that they were building up the UK supply of PPE, going so far as to claim that 70% of PPE was now from British sources. Sadly, this was not true; no such data was being kept. My Bill would put that right. Data would be kept and could be scrutinised. There has recently been a review of Government procurement, but despite its spirit, there is nothing in that review that will shift the dial, no great new move to help British firms to find favour in Whitehall, and no move either to help those outside London and the south-east. Many will remember the contract that Ministers gave a French firm to make our British passports. Today, when Russia is declared enemy No. 1 by the Prime Minister, we find out that a Russian company got £2.5 million to build his new briefing room.
Without question, tough rules that force civil servants to secure the best prices and the best value must be maintained. Taxpayers should not pay over the odds, certainly not after the scandal of the billions spent on Test and Trace, which those who have investigated think made little difference. The rules in international treaties on procurement that we have signed up to must be respected. But once those rules are met, British firms creating jobs in the United Kingdom should have a better chance of winning the contract than an overseas rival. British firms in general work to high standards, and while our markets are far from perfect, effective unions and a robust media all help to reinforce higher standards in our high street shops than in some overseas markets.
The suspicion in many boardrooms is that it helps to be close to London to win Government contracts. Indeed, what limited figures there are confirms that London and the south-east do disproportionately better for firms winning big Government contracts. If a business is based in the north-east, the east of England, the midlands or Yorkshire and Humber, there is a lower chance of it winning a large Government contract. Ministers have no plans to do anything about that. At the very least, and after recent court cases, figures should have to be published as part of the levelling-up and recovery agendas in which the Conservative party claims to believe. There should be debate about whether every region is getting a fair chance of its businesses landing a big job-creating deal from Government.
Lastly, for those of us who want to buy British whenever we can, why is there not a national kitemark, the flag of the United Kingdom, on every good and service provided in Britain, which British businesses can use to demonstrate to British consumers that a product is at least 50% made in the UK? The British Standards Institute could provide this service and promote it alongside the other kitemarks it operates for us.
The last thing that Britain should do is to close its mind to the world outside our shores. It would be madness to turn our backs on expertise from overseas, on the imagination and enterprise in the great goods and services that we can purchase from our friends in Europe, across the Commonwealth, in Asia, Africa and, of course, in the Americas and Australasia, but just as many of our allies overseas seek to buy local when they can, so should we. The Conservative party has been in power for a decade, yet it has never backed a serious “Buy British” campaign. My Bill would change the landscape for British businesses across the UK and not just those in our capital city. Never again will our own businesses’ expertise be ignored in a national emergency. Ministers should get on board. I commend my Bill to the House.