With the leave of the House, I would like to speak briefly in the closing of the debate. I add my congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire).
This has been a debate of great quality. It is pleasing to know that across the House there is deep concern for the health and wellbeing of children and adults across the world. Care and compassion must never stop at our own country’s borders. I have enjoyed the contributions of all Members who have spoken today—the right hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford), and my hon. Friends the Members for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous) and for Bristol West.
In many places around the world, parents walk for many miles simply to get to a clinic and a vaccine that they know could save their child’s life. Yet the same cannot be said in all parts of the world. Many barriers still exist in getting people the healthcare they need. No matter how much money we give or how many vaccines are developed, immunisation will not succeed, in the UK or overseas, unless people trust that clinics, hospitals, medication and vaccines are safe; and unless they know that the care they receive is available free of charge. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the alarming outbreak of Ebola continues to spread. It is a tragedy that many communities simply do not trust that the new Ebola vaccine is safe. Despite efforts to develop a new
vaccine for this horrific virus, around one in 10 people who are offered the vaccine are not taking it up. So we need system-wide solutions that tackle the root causes of ill health as the only way to bring about sustainable improvements to people’s lives. Clearly, we need to build trust between communities and health services. Too often in developing countries, the clinic is thought of as the place you go to die rather than recover. If we want global coverage of immunisations for all, then we must do far more to support countries to invest in public, free health services.
I agree with Ministers on their goals for immunisation, but my party disagrees with the Government, in some ways, on how we should support health systems overseas. This Government send Ministers to developing countries to talk up public-private partnerships. They encourage Governments to open up their health systems to British businesses. Labour Members want the UK’s international development work to be focused on supporting publicly owned, publicly run services that everyone can access, and an end to promoting private finance initiative schemes overseas. The next Labour Government will increase the aid spend on health and education, and set up a new dedicated public services unit within DFID to help countries to invest in their public services and get them working for everyone. We want a fairer international patent regime that helps people to access medicines, not pharmaceutical companies to hoard profits. Only with a system-wide approach like this will we achieve the goal of immunisations for all.
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