Eliminating World Poverty: Making Governance Work for the Poor

The Bishop of Chelmsford, The Rt Revd John Gladwin spoke on the Government’s White Paper, Eliminating World Poverty: Making Governance Work for the Poor in the House of Lords on 11 January 2007. The Bishop said:

Every time I am confronted by these issues, I cannot get the words of Jesus out of my mind.

"The poor you will always have with you".

Those words are not some fatalistic doctrine suggesting that there is nothing we can do; they are words that encourage generosity, but they also encourage us to face reality. Poverty is persistent, deeply embedded in human experience and profoundly resistant to all our endeavours to shift it. It is an evil, inhuman experience demanding that every generation faces it, fights it and seeks to overcome it. None of the weapons that we set up to tackle it is on its own adequate to the task. The debate and the issues it raises require us to be honest. I was particularly grateful to read page 17 of the Government's White Paper where the orange and red represent what we are not going to achieve. The whole column on sub-Saharan Africa is coloured orange and red—predominantly red. That makes for very depressing reading, but I am hugely grateful for the honesty on those matters.

Aid is important and it is vital to achieve the 0.7 per cent target. However, it will not shift the issue on its own. We talk about development and building the capacity of the people to fight the evil. That is right and important, but it is not enough if it is not accompanied by a profound change in the culture and the structures of power in the world. We think of the large issues that face us: the quality of governance and the building of corporate capacity were mentioned by the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, in connection with the private sector. That is all very good, but poverty and the history of injustice undermine the capacity of developing societies to meet the obligations of freedom and justice. Poverty feeds corruption and corruption feeds poverty. That cycle is rooted in injustice.

We are also faced with the wider international realities. I was particularly struck by the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, on Kenya. My much publicised visit last summer found similar incidents in the Samburu area. On the drought, local people in the mountain regions told me that there they no longer experience the cool mists of spring. Global warming is an increasingly big issue and raises for us big questions about our common responsibility.

We need all those tools—aid, development, structural change and a commitment to tackle the issues within our responsibility—but, above all, we need to be persistent and consistent. I do not know how many Members of the House have made new year's resolutions and have now abandoned them, but the poor in our world do not need new sets of resolutions; they need those we have taken on to be fulfilled.

We are told that Africa is a high priority in the Government's work. They are driving that forward by raising not only the level but the quality of aid; working with the grain of other people's cultures and the frame of their chosen priorities; building their capacity; and accepting our obligations to work for change and improvement in the international systems of trade and our global duty to the planet. Poverty is a powerful and persistent evil and it requires graft and sheer hard work by everyone working together to begin to shift it from the seat of power.

Secondly, we must have a passion for justice and a commitment to bring hope and hold on to it in people's lives. I well remember visiting a project with street children in rural Kenya. The local church provided food and sustenance day by day for the predominantly teenage boys living on the street. Out of their own resources, local people are tackling the problems, but they need partnership and help. When asked what they wanted, the reply was clean water in showers, good schooling, people reconnected with their homes and families where possible, and the development of skills. Every step forward brings hope.

I have said previously in this House to Her Majesty's Government and I will say again that we must work with the grain of civil society if we are to succeed in this matter. On the basis of the White Paper, I suspect that we need a fresh discussion with the Government on the partnership between civil society agencies, including the faith communities, on how we unlock the vibrancy of those communities with which we are seeking to work. If I can in any way help with that, as chair of Christian Aid, I would be delighted to do so.

Thirdly, we need to tackle our own lifestyle. Every household needs to ask: where our is food coming from, who is profiting, what is our consumption doing to the world in which we live and are we creating a sense of interdependence?

Poverty will not be tackled primarily by money, programmes of action or even grand schemes and commissions, however important these are; it will be tackled by the profound moral energy and spiritual vision of people here and across the world, joined together in a common task.

If you ask why this is topic rising in importance in our community today, the answer is because of the stirring in the hearts and minds of growing numbers of people—the woman priest in Kenya running the street project, the young man who confronted me in Chelmsford High Street before Christmas requiring me to sign an Oxfam motion about poverty, and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, said, the tens of thousands of people on the streets at the G8 summit. It is the people who will shift these matters. We here in Parliament and in government must respond to that growing public energy and concern about these matters in the world. The White Paper opens up opportunity for us, and the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, has given us the chance today to put our energies into the debate.

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