Latin America

I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Waveney (Mr. Blizzard) on securing this important and timely debate and by putting on the record my view that his chairmanship of the all-party group on Latin America has resulted in the group's renaissance and has moved Latin America up the agenda in both the Department for International Development and the Foreign Office. I welcome that. He will know that I am particularly interested in Latin America, and I was pleased that this Minister and the relevant Minister in the Foreign Office came to a meeting in this House to discuss with interested Members the area's importance and the strategies that will be put in place in the forthcoming period. The hon. Gentleman did a well-informed and eloquent samba, if I can use that word, through Latin American issues. He eloquently described the importance of United Kingdom-Latin America links, the failure of many Latin American countries to meet some of the millennium development goals, particularly in respect of indigenous populations, which is a theme that I shall return to later, and the huge growth potential of Latin America, particularly Brazil, as a trading partner of Britain and the European Union. He also discussed how Brazil can become an influential regional player. I know that the Government support Brazil's position as a full-time member of the United Nations Security Council. The hon. Gentleman mentioned aid conditionality. I have never had an answer from the Minister or anybody else about the difference between aid conditionality and aid criteria. Perhaps the Minister would take this opportunity to answer that point. The hon. Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn) has a particular interest in Latin America, and that came over in his speech. He is well informed about the area and, obviously, has visited it over an extensive period. I do not agree with all his analyses, particularly of what is happening in Cuba and in Venezuela. He rightly highlighted the many human rights infringements that have taken place and continue to take place in Latin America, but I was slightly surprised that he praised the Cuban regime which, as he well knows, has an appalling human rights record. The hon. Gentleman was absolutely right to highlight the high levels of crime that exist across Latin America and the lack of governmental infrastructure at national and local levels in many of those countries. DFID certainly could play a significant role in building civil society and capacity. The hon. Member for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer) gave an informed contribution, although her view of economic policies in Latin America in the 1990s was rather simplistic. There has been economic growth—indeed, Latin American growth was highest in 2004, at 5.5 per cent. It is not a story of everything going backwards. People have been pulled out of poverty, although the rate of population increase has been greater than the rate at which economic liberalisation has allowed people to come out of poverty, and the definite lack of wealth cascading down to the indigenous and black populations has resulted in the rise of Chavez, Morales and potentially others, which desperately needs to be addressed. Latin America cannot turn its back on the international trading community; there will be significant problems if it chooses to do so. The hon. Lady was absolutely right to mention environmental degradation, particularly deforestation in Brazil but not only in Brazil, and the importance of and necessity for sustainable development and management of agriculture. I do not wish to repeat statistics that other hon. Members have given but just say that it is absolutely clear that a significant proportion of the population in Latin America, central America and the Caribbean live in abject poverty. It is unacceptable that 132 million out of a total population of 520 million people live on less than $2 per day, and we need to do more about it. I will come to what I think needs to be done a little later. It is the inequality that is so distressing in Latin America. The hon. Member for Islington, North, was absolutely right: one can fly into almost any Latin American capital and see glossy tower blocks and housing, and representatives of the international banking community and international organisations. However, in not only rural areas, but the outskirts of those cities, one can see terrible slums—or ranchos, as they are called in many countries in South America—terrible poverty and the crime that inevitably comes out of it. That crime needs to be addressed. However, there is some good news, as the hon. Member for Waveney highlighted. There is growing solidity of the democratic process in south America, although there are some problems. I certainly would not argue that Chavez was a total democrat, but I do not want to get sidetracked by that issue. There is still far too much corruption and there is weak governmental accountability; that needs to be addressed with the assistance of donor countries, by DFID and the international community, and through multilateral institutions. We Conservative Members welcome the funding that DFID commits to Latin America. There is the £300 million committed through multilateral contributions to the Inter-American Development Bank, the European Union, the UN, the World Bank and non-governmental organisations; the £41 million committed through the Latin American bilateral programme; and the £23 million committed through other bilateral funds, such as the civil society challenge fund and the global conflict prevention pool. However, when that is compared with DFID's contributions to Africa and Iraq, we see that Latin America is a very small beneficiary of aid money. Just 1 per cent. of direct budgetary support, and 3 per cent. of bilateral aid, goes to Latin America. I would argue that Latin America has been overlooked, partially because it is viewed as a middle-income country, as other hon. Members have said, and partially because of the success of lobbying groups for Africa—that is, of the Commission for Africa and of the G8 at Gleneagles. Also, as the hon. Member for Islington, North, said, the UK's relationship with Latin and central America has been damaged by the closure of embassies, DFID offices and trade offices. We have just closed two trade offices in Brazil. I am sure that the Minister or someone at the Department of Trade and Industry has a good explanation for that, but it seems extraordinary, given how powerful a trading partner Brazil will be in future, and particularly given China's significant and growing influence in Latin America. I have two or three specific issues to raise. The first is debt. Obviously, we Conservative Members welcome the heavily indebted poor countries initiative and its success in Bolivia, Guyana, Honduras and Nicaragua, but many other countries in Latin America have significant burdens of heavy debt; Peru, Ecuador, Argentina and Brazil are four examples of countries classified as severely indebted by the World Bank. Heavy debt keeps poor people poor and, in the worst cases, pushes millions of people into poverty. Debt inhibits growth and wealth redistribution by reducing the amount of money available to Governments to invest in social services and welfare. Brazil is perhaps the best example: 40 million people there live on less than $2 a day. Brazil spends three times as much servicing debt as it does on public health care. That is not sustainable, nor should it be internationally acceptable. There are many other such examples. I would welcome comment from the Minister on what the international community will do to address debt. We could talk for some time about the political situation in Venezuela, and about that country's influence in the surrounding regions—not just in Latin America, but as a result of its selling cheap oil to the Caribbean, and its potential for influence at the UN and elsewhere. My question to the Minister on that topic is: where has the strategy for security sector reform—particularly of the police and judicial systems—mentioned in DFID's Latin America strategy paper got to in combating the problems caused by drugs and drug barons in Latin America, and in curbing armed groups? The hon. Member for Waveney was right to say that the same degree of conflict resolution required elsewhere is not necessary in Latin America, but there are still armed groups—particularly in Colombia and parts of Mexico—whose influence, both political and military, needs to be reduced; we must make sure that their power is channelled through, and focused on, the ballot box. My second question to the Minister is about poverty reduction strategy papers. Clearly, as DFID is taking a regionalised, rather than country-specific, view it will be much more difficult for countries to participate, particularly those that are in the process of drawing up their poverty reduction strategy papers. How does the regionalisation strategy and policy fit with working with Governments to make sure that their poverty reduction strategy papers are appropriate to their country, and not to regions? There are great differences between countries in Latin and central America. We have to make sure that poverty reduction strategy papers are relevant, that Governments buy into them, and that they are not donor-driven, as has happened elsewhere, as the Minister will be aware. Like the hon. Member for Richmond Park, I did not agree with the hon. Member for Waveney on his rather defeatist attitude to the drug problem. There is an argument for allowing the Bolivians and others to produce coca for their own traditional purposes. I was in Yemen recently, where people chew khat in much the same way that people chew coca in Bolivia. Longer-term, we have to find a strategy—an alternative crop or alternative livelihoods—to ensure that the volume of production is not sufficient to allow an enormous amount for export, as that creates problems in north America and Europe.