International Development (Reporting and Transparency) Bill

I am grateful for the support of my hon. Friend, who was beginning to make an interesting speech. If she catches your eye later, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I shall listen with even more interest to what she has to say. The second crucial aspect of the Bill concerns assisting developing countries in whatever way we can in their approach towards empowerment. Our role should be to provide generous and predictable assistance and to work in co-operation with country-owned development goals, with the leadership coming from developing countries themselves. That is why the Bill is specific in referring to assistance in implementing development goals 1 to 7, which are largely the responsibility of developing countries. This assistance can be both visionary and practical, and some interventions have demonstrated that very point. If the Bill can assist by way of an annual report to the House in eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality and empowering women, reducing child and maternal mortality, combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases and ensuring environmental sustainability, it will be worthwhile legislation. When I first entered the House, third world development was a political backwater. It was in the margins of politics. I am pleased that now it is mainstream. Once, debates about absolute poverty were for the committed few. Today, they have a resonance with every Member in every constituency. My Bill would put the Executive and their practical commitment to making poverty history under more formal scrutiny. It would also sharpen the responsibility of all Members to track the progress that is being made towards the millennium development goals and to push for action when that progress is not sufficient. In this Parliament, lifting the weight of poverty that is crushing so many lives in the poorest countries has to be a task that is shared by Minister and Members alike. The Bill is conceived in that spirit. What could be more terrible, after all the summits and songs, all the consultations and commitments of 2005, then to see a veil of tired indifference once again fall over the daily torment that is absolute poverty? Parliament must not be seen to be caring only when the ghostly images of hollowed-out children fill our television screens, or when Bob Geldof rightly raises the flag. We must be working all the time, especially when the gaze of the media goes elsewhere, to turn history’s ratchet in favour of all those who are crying out for schools, medicines, freedoms and opportunities that will make their children’s lives unrecognisably better than their own. I hope that I have made it clear that the Bill, in some senses, has a technical purpose. I ask all Members on both sides of the House to see its value in the greater scheme of things. What scheme could be more admirable than ensuring that every one of the millennium development goals is, with each year that passes, more of a living reality in scores of countries and for millions of families throughout this potentially beautiful world? The Bill is about the future, and what an immemorial achievement that would be. I commend the measure to the House.