§ Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Fitch.]
§ 12.28 p.m.
§ Sir Cyril Osborne (Louth)On 4th May, I asked the Minister a Question on overseas aid and I am grateful for this opportunity to pursue the matter, because the answer was not satisfactory or sufficient. I would remind the Parliamenary Secretary of the background which justifies the demand for greater overseas aid. There are two reasons.
First, there is the unequal and unfair distribution of the world's wealth. The income per capita, which is a rough estimate of the standard of living, in the United States is 3,220 dollars a year, and in Vietnam it is 92; in the United Kingdom, it is 1,688, and in Indonesia, it is only 49; in Canada, it is 2,284, and in India it is only 89. In the other section of the world—the Communist world—in Soviet Russia, it is 1,253, and in China, it is only 74.
Some years ago, when I was in Peking, Marshal Chen-Yi, the Foreign Secretary, said that the vast difference between the affluence of Soviet Russia and the poverty of China was one of the important factors causing the difference between those two great Communist Powers.
It is my contention that the white, industrialised and wealthy section of mankind is living between ten and fifty times better than the poor, coloured and raw material producing nations. Our increasing affluence is based upon and dependent on their deepening poverty and this really ought to strike the conscience of mankind to have something done to put the situation right. Four years ago in the Indian Parliament, the matter was brought out most starkly. The then Leader of the Opposition in the Indian Parliament said that there were 270 million Indians living on 3½d. a day each. Mr. Nehru, who was then Prime Minister, denied that figure. He said that it should be 1s. 3d.
Even conceding that it was 1s. 3d.—and The Times said that it would rather take the figure put by the Leader of the Opposition—when we remember that 471 the average industrial wage for men in this country is £20 a week, one has an indication of the vast gulf between our standard of living and that endured by the vast majority of mankind. It also indicates the immense sacrifices that will be necessary if justice is to be done between the white peoples and the coloured peoples of the earth.
These problems cannot be solved by sentiment, no matter how well founded or well intentioned. The main cause of this poverty is, I believe, the tragic turn in the terms of trade over the last 12 to 14 years. The terms of trade have gone against these poorer, coloured people, who produce the raw materials necessary for our high prosperity. The manufactured goods price index in 1953 was 96; today it is 108. This means that we are charging about 14 per cent. more for the manufactured goods we sell to them than we were in 1953. On the other hand—and this is the basis of their deepening poverty—the primary product price index in 1953 was 102; it has sunk to 93. Therefore, we are paying to these people for the commodities they produce which are so necessary for our standard of living, 10 per cent. less than in 1953.
An eminent Soviet economist estimated two years ago that, if the terms of trade had remained the same as in 1953, we, the white, favoured wealthy industrialised nations would be paying to the poor, raw material producing coloured peoples of the world something like 14,000 million dollars a year more for what they are producing for us.
What we are giving them in aid is piffling. It is as though we stole £1 from them and gave them 6d. to get a cup of tea. This is the real trouble and the basis of their poverty and on this I ask the Government whether anything can be done. It seems to me that the only solution to these great problems is for world commodity prices to be increased, doubled or trebled. I know that it will be difficult but I suggest to the Government that there should be international marketing boards to control the supply and purchase of these basic raw materials in order to give the producers a better price for what they are producing.
For example, the price of raw rubber—natural rubber—is 17½d. per lb., 472 which is the same price as 20 years ago. But the value of sterling, in which we buy that raw rubber, has depreciated since the war to about one-third. If we were to pay the rubber producers a fair price, on these facts we should be paying them three times what we are now paying them. Yet Indonesia, which producers our main supplies of rubber, has an income per capita of only 49 dollars a year as compared with our 1,688.
It is footling to send these countries bits of aid. We have to pay them more for what they produce for us. I know that this is a difficult, complex international problem but I ask the hon. Gentleman to consult his right hon. Friend and, through him, the Cabinet to see whether, through United Nations Special Agencies, something more could be done to get a better price and to stabilise prices for the poorer peoples of the world.
The second problem which causes their poverty is the growth in population. We have heard much about the population explosion. I believe that it is an even greater cause of the poverty of coloured peoples. It is estimated that the world population is 3,300 million. United Nations experts estimate that, by the end of the century, it will have risen to 7,000 million and that, in 70 years time, it will be up to 14,000 million. Experts of the F.A.O. two years ago estimated that world food production would have to increase fivefold to give the world population of nearly 7,000 million a tolerable standard of living by the end of the century.
During recent years—and this is the tragic side of it all—world food production has scarcely increased at all. So it is obvious that mankind is breeding himself into certain starvation and this is the second point I wish to raise. It is often spoken of in the popular Press as though the population explosion is a temporary freak of nature that will pass, or is an act of God. It is neither. It is manmade and will go on and on and will get worse for the simple reason that medical science over the last 30 or 40 years has produced antibiotics that have largely eliminated the old killer diseases like cholera, typhus and malaria.
It has also helped to do for the coloured women what the white women 473 have been lucky enough to enjoy for many years. It has reduced the rate of infant mortality. Some years ago in Bombay this was as high as 500 per 1,000 live births; now it is 135. In the United Kingdom it is 23 per 1,000 live births and in the United States only 17.
If the coloured women of the world, thanks to medical science, have their infantile mortality rate reduced to the level of the white mothers, the growth in world population will be something that we cannot comprehend, but surely we must all hope that the coloured mothers will have at least as good attention as white mothers get in this country. It is a frightening thought that India, with its deep poverty and 89 dollars per year income per capita as against our 1,688, will this year increase in population by 12 million. There will be 12 million more mouths to feed in India next year than there are today.
It is fair for us to tell those we try to help that, unless they help themselves by controlling their own increase in population, nothing that we can do will help them to climb out of the pit of the deep poverty which they endure at present.
In view of those two fantastically difficult problems, I want to ask the Minister one or two questions about what the British Government are doing. In answer to a Question I asked on 4th May the Minister told me that the United Nations Special Agencies were granted £15.6 million out of our funds in 1964 and that that was increased to £19.7 million last year. I am glad that the amount has been increased, but it is very small. In view of the size and urgency of the problem, that amount is merely playing with it.
Whatever people may say about the failure of the United Nations in political matters, no one can deny that the United Nations Special Agencies have done, and are doing, a very fine job all over the world and that they ought to be supported more by us. In those exchanges on 4th May my hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice (Mr. Wall) interrupted and said that we were second only to America in our support of the United Nations Special Agencies. That may be true, but it is not enough. Cannot we grant more money in that way?
Cmnd. 3180 states that the target—not the amount spent—for overseas aid in 474 1964 was £190 million, in 1965, £205 million, and, in 1966, £225 million. This year we dropped that figure to £205 million, a cut of £20 million. For a nation with the colossal gross national product that we enjoy, which spends over £2,000 million a year on drink, tobacco, amusement and gambling, to cut this vital programme by £20 million, because it will hurt us, is a terrible thing to do.
We cannot help these people, unless we are prepared to sacrifice. It will mean a very severe cut in our standard of living. We cannot play Santa Claus to them and expect the American taxpayer to pay for it. The gap between their standard of living and ours is so enormous that I wish the Government would do what Mr. Gaitskell did in his Budget speech of 1951 and say to the people, "You have got to accept a lower standard of living". If the facts were put before our people, I think that they would accept the need for that.
Voluntary organisations like Oxfam, the Save the Children Fund, Christian Week, and all the rest of them, do a fine job. They are supported by fine and noble men and women throughout the country. However, what they do does not begin to scratch the surface of the problem. They collect £8 million per year to be distributed amongst 2,500 million desperately poor people. We are salving our conscience by subscribing to these very worthy causes, but we are not beginning to meet the problem.
Although these voluntary organisations are not really touching the problem, they are doing good, in that they are acting as propaganda and are drawing the people's attention to the need for the overseas aid and for the tragic poverty of the people overseas. Is it possible for the Government to get the voluntary organisations together so that they will increase their propaganda? Will the Government set the facts before our people and say, "If we are to help, we have to give much more and it will cost us something. It will hurt us. Only in so far as we are prepared to pay and to be hurt can we help these unfortunate people".
I do not know, Sir, whether you saw Cliff Michelmore's T.V. broadcast "One World" on the B.B.C. on Sunday night. It was a very fine broadcast. It contained programmes from all over the world. It brought out, first, the fact that 475 we are one world and, secondly, the immense problem of hunger, of poverty and of the increasing population. It is along these lines that the Government should be thinking. What is being done by the Government? Cannot more be done through the United Nations Special Agencies?
§ 12.45 p.m.
§ The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Overseas Development (Mr. Albert E. Oram)The hon. Member for Louth (Sir C. Osborne) has understandably ranged very widely over this very wide topic. He will be the first to agree that a half-hour debate is not the best opportunity for doing justice to it. He is all the more to be congratulated on having taken the only immediate opportunity which has presented itself to him.
The hon. Gentleman has called attention to the enormous size of the world poverty problem and to the way in which it is getting worse as a result of rapidly increasing populations. He has drawn graphically striking contrasts between the standard of living of the developed world—ourselves, America and other countries—and that of the developing world, giving figures from India and Indonesia. I agree that it is not easy to set a figure per capita income on which we can place great reliance. The hon. Gentleman quoted the case of India. These statistics in an exact sense are not particularly helpful. They are, perhaps, useful in serving the purpose which the hon. Gentleman sought to serve of showing the stark contrast and presenting the enormous challenge that the problem of world poverty poses to the developed world.
The hon. Gentleman said that it should be a challenge to our conscience—in other words, that we have a moral obligation as people fortunately placed to do all that we can possibly afford to do to help the less fortunately placed. The hon. Gentleman went on in the latter part of his speech to suggest that this involves sacrifices by our people and that, if the case is put to them, they will be prepared to accept these sacrifices.
I go a long way with the hon. Gentleman in that, but I would put one other side of this. Although he is right to suggest that we must make our aid programme 476 as large and as generous as it can be, and although the Ministry of Overseas Development has made it clear that our prime concern is to achieve the development of the developing countries, it should be recognised that out of the provision of aid come consequential advantages even to us. There is a good deal of mutual aid in this business that is not always sufficiently recognised. To begin with, prosperity, like peace, is indivisible and it is not possible for one nation or one group of nations to gain continuing prosperity at the expense of another part of the world which remains poor. We are all in this together.
Secondly, a good deal of our aid is tied to exports from this country, and therefore our export performance is improved the more generous that we can be in providing finance for the development of developing countries. It is not always true, therefore, that doing something for the developing countries involves direct sacrifice for ourselves.
In this connection, I take up the point which the hon. Gentleman made about commodity prices. It is not always necessary that we make sacrifices in order to help the developing countries in the matter of trade. It may well be that the most useful action which developed countries can take to improve the export earnings of developing countries is to maintain a high level of economic activity within our own countries, thus increasing the demand for imports of raw materials from the developing countries. By this means, in a sense, the good fortune of developed countries can spill over into the developing countries through an increased demand for their products. This is another aspect of the truth that prosperity is indivisible.
The hon. Gentleman will know that these questions of trade in relation to aid are to be discussed on a worldwide basis at the second U.N.C.T.A.D. conference which is to take place in New Delhi in February next. Many of the matters are much more the concern of my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade, but our Ministry has a direct interest, too. A good deal of preliminary preparation has been going on both in Her Majesty's Government and internationally, and I am glad to say that the U.N.C.T.A.D. committee which is concerned with the aid aspects of its work has 477 produced a statement stressing the need for an increase in the volume of aid and for a softening and harmonising of the terms of the aid given. I assure the hon. Gentleman that Her Majesty's Government, like other donor Governments, will be giving much thought to the agenda of the U.N.C.T.A.D. conference. It would be premature to come to conclusions now, but the prospect of the February conference will give a stimulus to the thinking of all industrialised countries on these important matters.
Another aspect of the dependence of developing countries on commodity trading which is closely relevant to what the hon. Gentleman said is the degree to which many of them depend on one or, perhaps, two commodities alone. Particularly on the technical assistance side, our aid programmes are directed, whenever we can, to helping the developing countries to diversify their agricultural economies. This is an important way by which we can help. About 30 per cent. of our aid which goes to help projects in developing countries goes to agriculture, and we discuss with the Governments of the developing countries how best to diversify their agricultural economies, having in mind their vulnerability as a result of being too dependent on one commodity.
I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman that the population explosion presents one of the greatest problems facing the world today. He gave global figures showing how it can be forecast that the population will increase. It is in the least developed parts of the world that the highest rates of population growth exist. In Europe, for example, it is estimated that at the present rate of increase it will take 78 years to double the population, whereas in South America at the present rate of increase there it will take only 26 years. Thus, this problem, though a world one, is all the more significant in the developing world, and continued population growth at this pace in the poorer countries must inevitably offset, or more than offset, the increases in agricultural and industrial production which can be achieved and must tragically disappoint their people's hopes of rising standards.
This is why we are prepared to do what we can by offering expert advice on family planning. We are doing this by giving financial support to the International 478 Planned Parenthood Federation, to the tune of £50,000 a year over the next five years, and by seeking to build up in this country expert resources from which we can offer advice. We are planning, for example—this was announced in the White Paper to which the hon. Gentleman referred in another context—to set up a Population Bureau in this country which can be a centre at which knowledge and experience are gained and collected and at which personnel can be trained for visits to overseas countries in order to put at their disposal expert advice and assistance. We undertake, also, that doctors and nurses who come from developing countries to this country for training receive training in the subject of population control. We do what we can, too, in the United Nations agencies. Our delegates have often called attention to the problem. I assure the hon. Gentleman that we are doing a good deal in that field to which he rightly called attention.
Towards the end of his speech, the hon. Gentleman commented on the size of our aid programme, saying that our contributions to the United Nations Agencies were just playing with the problem. He will recognise that our contribution to the United Nations is only one-tenth of our overall aid programme, so that our total aid programme is about £200 million. I agree that, set against the enormous size of the world poverty problem, this is playing with it, but our aid programme has been steadily rising. In 1957–58 it was £81 million, and in the last financial year it was £213 million. There has, therefore, been a stepping up, although I admit that there has been a most regrettable set-back in the current year. I am sure that the House understands the reason for the decision to make a cut. The hon. Gentleman must realise that any aid programme can be successful only if it is based on a sound home economy. If things go wrong at home, our aid programme will go wrong.
We have made clear that the size of our aid programme will be reviewed periodically in the light of progress made in overcoming our economic problems. My right hon. Friend is constantly reviewing the situation in consultation with his colleagues. I cannot today say what the aid target will be in future years—the normal time for giving that information is 479 early in the calendar year—but I assure the hon. Gentleman that we are reviewing the matter and we look forward to progress as the economic situation improves.
In the few remaining moments, I wish to emphasise that the content of an aid programme is as important as the size of it. Our present arrangement whereby 480 we provide many loans interest-free is an enormous help to developing countries. The overall amount may look the same, but, if it is on interest-free terms, it is enormously more valuable to them.
§ It being One o'clock, Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER suspended the sitting till half-past Two o'clock, pursuant to Order.
481§ Sitting resumed at 2.30 p.m.