ALL-PARTY PARLIAMENTARY GROUP ON POPULATION, DEVELOPMENT

and

REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH

MINUTES OF PROCEEDINGS

at a

PARLIAMENTARY HEARING

In Committee Room 19

On

Monday 12 June 2006

Before:

Richard Ottaway MP (Chairman)

Christine McCafferty MP

Paul Flynn MP

Sandra Gidley MP

Viscount Craigavon

Baroness Northover

Baroness Thomas of Walliswood

Baroness Tonge

Ms Jennifer Woodside

Ms Catherine Budgett-Meakin

Ms Jane Wyer

Ms Ann Mette Kjaerby

(From the Shorthand Notes of:

W B Gurney & Sons LLP,

Hope House,

45 Great Peter Street,

London SW1P 3LT)


Witnesses: MR GARETH THOMAS, a Member of Parliament, Permanent Under-Secretary for International Development, MR ROBERT LOWSON, Director of Environment Strategy, Defra, MR JOHN WORLEY, Reproductive and Child Health Team Leader, Policy Division, DFID, MS GEORGIA TAYLOR, Reproductive and Child Health Team, Deputy Team Leader, Policy Division, DFID, and MS SANDRA MACDONAGH, Health Adviser, Reproductive and Child Health Team, DFID examined.

CHAIRMAN: Can I welcome everyone to the fifth hearing and probably the most important one to date. Can I welcome you, Minister, very much indeed. This is not a select committee. You are under no obligation to turn up or to accept an invitation to the All-Party Group and we deeply appreciate the fact you have chosen to do so. Can I say we have had submissions from nearly 40 bodies around the world, some of them from the best people in the business, and I have to say your paper report is right up there with them. It is a quality piece of work and something which we will find very useful indeed, so perhaps we start with a lot of appreciation for your Department.

If you would like to start with a few remarks and then I understand the format is you have to be away at the latest at 4.30. Your officials will stay behind to deal with any other questions and one or two points that we have which may be better dealt with by them, if that is okay with you.

GARETH THOMAS MP, PUSS for ID: Chairman, thank you very much. Thanks for your initial comments. I feel like I am being softened up for the ferocious cross-examination which will no doubt follow. Let me introduce the officials who are with me. On my right is Robert Lowson from Defra and on my left are John Worley from DFID, Georgia Taylor from DFID and Sandra Macdonagh from DFID.

Let me say one or two opening remarks, if I may. In the last 40 years population growth rates and family sizes have fallen. We know that has helped to spur economic growth, it has helped to reduce poverty and it has given people more opportunities and more life chances. The International Conference on Population and Development that took place in Cairo in 1994, which all of you will be more than familiar with, recognised that population growth slows down when women have access to sexual reproductive health, when they are educated and when they are able to earn money and to exercise their rights. We believe that, whilst we have made progress, we have not come anywhere like far enough as yet. It is certainly true that there are many more women who are able to control their fertility and to choose if and when to have children, but the figures that demonstrate the continuing lack of access I think are quite horrific and they bear repeating by way of introduction. We know that 137 million women cannot have access to family planning services either because they are poor, because those services do not exist or they are too expensive, so essentially they do not have any choice in deciding their own future. We know that 87 million women face an unwanted or unplanned pregnancy every year as a result, that some 90 million women risk an unsafe abortion, and unsafe abortions cost the lives of about 70,000 women directly every year as a result. Those figures are not surprising. What I think is outrageous is that in the 21st century we are not doing more to prevent those statistics from being the reality that they are. If we are going to change that situation we have got to do more about gender equality, provide better family planning services and tackle the shortage of reproductive health commodities. The Department recognises those issues and I hope that in the coming hour I will be able to give you confidence that we continue to see this as a priority and we have in place the right policies to begin to tackle that problem.

CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much indeed, Minister. Gareth, looking at your report, you are quite firm about a number of MDGs and the linkage between population growth, and on others you are a bit more cautious. The word “may” creeps in, “there may be a linkage”. Could I question you a bit on the linkage point. The general question that is the headline of our inquiry is to what extent do you feel that population growth does have an impact upon achieving targets set by the MDGs?

GARETH THOMAS MP, PUSS for ID: I think what is clear is that if there is population growth on the scale that we currently estimate, that will place huge pressure on a number of developing countries. If there is a big increase in population, that forces governments to look at their investment plans in basic health, basic education, and they will have to potentially find substantially more revenue to provide those basic services. For some governments that is a huge challenge. I think where the “may” comes in is there is also a range of other issues that impact, of course, on whether or not the MDGs are going to be met in developing countries. Governance is undoubtedly a key issue, that is something which the White Paper, in particular, will say more on. Then there are all sorts of other issues around climate change, when international resources are deployed and the benefits of natural resources are captured for poor people. All of those other factors have a profound impact on whether or not a country can achieve the MDGs, but I come back to my opening comment, there is no doubt that if population growth continues in the way that it is estimated to, a number of developing countries will face a huge challenge in meeting the MDGs as a result.

CHRIS McCAFFERTY MP: Can I join the Chairman of the hearing in congratulating the Minister and, in fact, the whole Department for what is a really excellent submission and I think we probably would not have expected less. It is the usual very high standard that DFID turns out on all occasions.

That was the soft set-up, now the question. Again, the same thing really, the British Government, through DFID, has taken, I think everyone would agree, a world lead in terms of pushing the agenda for sexual reproductive health and rights and needs to be congratulated for that. In particular, I think you have tackled a very difficult area with the establishment of the Safe Abortion Fund. Many people who support sexual reproductive health do not necessarily support even safe abortion, never mind funding it, so I think it has been very courageous. What I would like to know is, knowing the difficulties on this particular issue, how does the Government, how does DFID, encourage other governments to support the idea of safe abortion and to contribute to the Fund?

GARETH THOMAS MP, PUSS for ID: There are a number of ways. One is the most direct way: once we had taken our decision to contribute to the Safe Abortion Fund, I wrote around to a number of like-minded country governments to ask them to contribute and I have spoken to a number of those ministers directly as well, so there is that direct contact in that way. More generally, on the issue of unsafe abortion, we will raise it with developing country governments if we think it is a significant issue, we will factor it into our lobbying work at an international level in the work we do with UNIFEM, UNFPA and a range of other organisations. Unsafe abortion is part of the agenda that we have at the moment.

MS BUDGETT-MEAKIN: There is still a lot of taboo around population, and I think one indication of that is that none of the mainstream development agencies nor the environment agencies, while invited to submit evidence, has done so. I wondered what kind of lead DFID might give to them? Bodies such as ODI and IIED have not submitted either. What could DFID do to try and get this very important issue, which DFID so obviously acknowledges as such, back into the real debate about development and, indeed, about environment?

GARETH THOMAS MP, PUSS for ID: Let me say seriously, one of the reasons why we have engaged in the way that we have done with this Committee’s inquiry is because we recognise that gap. By the fact that we have submitted our own evidence, my officials and I are appearing today and your coming inquiry report, I hope will give a new impetus to the discussion of the issue amongst the wider development community. On environment, I think there is specifically a growing debate on the linkages between environment and development. I think that is reflected in the environment development NGO network that has developed and I hope again that the White Paper will give confidence that DFID and the Government, as a whole, are moving to step up our work on environment because of the close linkages and also the growing opportunities there are to work in this area. On the specific issue of population and the taboo around it, I think you are right. There has been a taboo partly because of the worries people have had about population control and some of the more coercive aspects of previous population control policies. We are very clear that is not the direction which we seek to travel in, but I think on the issue of population impact on MDGs, it is time that we revived debate around that topic and, in that sense, I welcome this inquiry.

BARONESS THOMAS: Along a similar sort of theme but from the countries themselves, what are the domestic reasons why countries are less interested, so it seems now, in pursuing direct policies which impact directly on population growth? Is it religion? Is it fear of what donor countries are going to say on those sorts of issues? Can you give us any insight on that aspect of it?

GARETH THOMAS MP, PUSS for ID: Two years ago was the tenth anniversary of that landmark conference in Cairo and there were a number of regional events that took place around the world. It was clear from those events that a whole range of developing countries were very actively looking at the impact of population and its impact on their country’s development. What I would accept is that this issue has not had the profile that many other issues that impact on the MDGs do have and I think there are a variety of reasons for that. Some countries face much more immediate pressures, such as the HIV and AIDS epidemic. In countries where there is limited civil service capacity or, indeed, limited legal capacity more generally, those more immediate issues inevitably take precedence. I think it is clear from the work that UNFPA and UNIFEM do, and the interest in the work of those organisations and their agendas, that there is a substantial developing country interest in this issue albeit it does not get the profile it deserves.

BARONESS THOMAS: How can we encourage that? How can perhaps you or the donor community in general encourage that aspect?

GARETH THOMAS MP, PUSS for ID: I think we can encourage it through the dialogue we have with countries around their Poverty Reduction Strategies or their national development plans. These are documents that are still relatively young development tools, for want of a better word, and I think most people in the development world would accept they are not perfect documents in general terms by any means and miss out on a number of things. There is certainly plenty of scope, I think, for us to encourage politicians in those countries, ministers, NGOs, et cetera, to make representations around the issue of population and its impact on that country’s ability to meet the MDGs.

BARONESS NORTHOVER: You have raised the issue of AIDS, and I think we may come on to that later. That is an area where a huge amount of effort is being put into at the moment. In order to address that effectively, one of the issues there is clearly addressing gender inequality, which you have mentioned also in relation to this. Is this something where this area can be more closely tied in, and do you see efforts to do that or is that thwarted by, say, the American reluctance to go down that particular road? What is your experience of that?

GARETH THOMAS MP, PUSS for ID: I think on gender inequality there is a whole series of factors that contribute to gender inequality, a whole range of cultural factors in developing countries as well as the way in which donors behave. I think we have to continue to champion the empowerment of women, to continue to acknowledge the need for better family planning services, for example better access to reproductive health commodities, and to continue to argue in a much broader way for the empowerment of women, for more women to be involved in the political life of a country and to occupy senior positions of power. There are a number of countries where, certainly in the short time that I have been a minister, there have been very encouraging signs of progress in that area. Let us be clear, there is an awful long way to go yet. I do not think the American policy in terms of the global gag rule I would say would be the most immediate issue by any stretch of the imagination. I think it is the range of cultural and social factors which we have seen in the past in our country and which still are big factors in many European countries that are the key issues that we have to face.

MS WOODSIDE: First of all, from IPPF I would like to commend your Department for being so supportive of the goals of the Abortion Fund and really taking the lead there, so thank you very much.