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Urbanisation (Developing Countries)

: We have a lot to learn from the history of this and other European countries. Those lessons must and can be applied by leaders of urban communities in the developing world. The scale of the problem is enormous. Some 924 million people, roughly a third of the global urban population, live in slums. The number of people migrating from the countryside to towns, or being born in towns, means that the world's urban population is growing by 180,000 people each day. Roughly speaking that is the same as the population of the city of York and its surrounding suburbs and villages. That is the scale of the problem with which the world must grapple: can we build cities, homes, infrastructures, schools and health clinics around the world at the rate of a York a day? I believe that we can. We managed to overcome urban squalor in this country in a century, and I think that it is possible to do the same globally. That is the challenge that we face. It is important for us not to fall into the trap, as do some people who write about the problem of urbanisation, of setting towns against the countryside in a competition for scarce resources. In the countryside and in towns it is the same phenomenon that leads to human desperation: poverty. Poverty in the countryside is what drives people to the towns to seek a better life, and poverty in urban slums holds people back from finding that better life. For instance, the poor rickshaw puller in Dhaka in Bangladesh has probably come from the countryside and a poor existence as an agricultural day labourer. So it is not possible to solve the problems of the countryside at the expense of the towns, or vice versa. As my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North, said, the process of urbanisation is irreversible. Bulldozing settlements—as the Sudanese Government have done around Khartoum, the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe and the Kenyan Government in Nairobi, and as has happened in Lagos—does not relieve the pressure on scarce resources in urban areas. Those people remain, and they still need education, health care and shelter. If we look back at the history of our own country it can be seen that local government has played an enormously important part in overcoming the problems of urban squalor. There is a growing recognition of the importance of local government in overcoming those problems in developing countries. After the Gleneagles G8 summit, the Prime Minister said that for the G8 deal"““to translate into poverty reduction across the continent it is important that Africa builds effective, accountable central and local governments””." The Prime Minister has also emphasised the importance of local government in achieving the millennium development goals, some of which are particularly the responsibilities of local government, such as goal 7, target 11, on slum upgrading. The report by the Commission for Africa, of which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State was a member, stressed that devolving power and taking decisions locally brings politicians and decision makers closer to those who use their services. That can also enable excluded groups, such as the disabled, women and, more generally, the poor to participate in the process of government. The Commission for Africa report, however, also rightly stressed that municipalities in most developing countries are hampered by a lack of trained personnel and resources. All too often, therefore, the services that they provide are patchy and inadequate. Donor countries such as ours and the Governments of African countries need to invest in capacity building in local government, in training local government officers and in making policy development, revenue collection and revenue spending more transparent and accountable locally. The Ghanaian Government, for instance, receive budget support through Government-to-Government aid from the UK and have a common fund that devotes a fixed percentage of national revenue to local authorities. At a grass-roots level, my city has a twinning link with Fanteakwa district in Ghana. I once visited Begoro, the main town of Fanteakwa district, met the chief executive of the council and saw some of the services that it provides in the district. They are good, well run services. There are schools and a technical college; he showed me a library that they were building. When I returned I talked to York and North Yorkshire library services and to the university college of York St. John to see whether we could obtain some suitable books—sending any old books would not be useful—for their library and ship them out. We collected books from academic and public libraries in North Yorkshire and e-mailed a list of titles to Begoro. They chose those that they thought suitable and appropriate and we shipped the books out to them. As my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor) pointed out, small-scale, local, town-to-town links can make a difference. The Commonwealth local government forum, which receives £2 million of DFID funding and about twice that in support in kind from local authorities in the United Kingdom—usually in the form of staff seconded to work for short periods in developing countries—has built some effective partnerships under what its good practice scheme. Lisburn city council in Northern Ireland, for instance, has worked with Swellendam municipality in the western cape of South Africa to create an economic development strategy. Plymouth city council works with Shama Ahanta council in Ghana to devise and implement a sustainable tourism strategy. Newham council works with Thiruvananthapuram council in India—I apologise to my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough, South and East Cleveland (Dr. Kumar) if my pronunciation is poor—to use geographic information systems mapping to target economic development projects more accurately on poor communities in the area. Local government, if it is properly resourced, works. South Africa, after the move to enfranchise all citizens of all races, held its first local government elections in 1995. Since then, the number of homes in urban areas with electricity has increased from one third to three quarters. The number with clean water has increased from 62 per cent. to 85 per cent. Achieving connections in South Africa is the responsibility of local government. In Uganda, the local government association has created a scheme called city community challenges, targeting resources on urban areas of need. In Jinja, where the Nile leaves Lake Victoria, a city community challenge built 700 low-cost homes, using local materials and local labour—unemployed people from the slum areas of the city who received training in the craft skills they needed to build homes. Those selected to move into the homes were people who were excluded generally from society, such as disabled people and households headed by women. They, too, were provided with training as well as a home so that they could build a secure economic future. When Anna Tibaijuka from UN-Habitat came to speak to the all-party group in November last year, she mentioned her organisation's new report on financing urban shelter. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North, I was struck by the following statistic: most slum dwellers rent shacks from private owners—I had assumed the shacks were self-built when people arrived in the city although in the majority of cases they are not—and the shack owners can get the cost back within nine months. How do they get their cost back so quickly? By charging exploitative rents. Businesses generally want a higher rate of return in developing countries than in the developed world because they perceive that the business risks are higher, but no legitimate business or finance house expects a rate of return of more than 100 per cent. in a single year. That makes me think that it must be possible to invest in higher quality housing at lower rents and still be able to achieve a sensible rate of return of the kind that an investor might expect in a developing country—perhaps a 20 or 25 per cent. return. If the council became involved in partnership with the financier, it could contribute real value by granting title to the land to the people who lived in the housing, and because the rent would be lower more money would be available to pay the local authority, or a private provider, for services such as electricity and water. Therefore, I warmly support UN-Habitat's slum upgrading facility proposal, which my hon. Friend mentioned. The second policy issue that we need to address in relation to the problems of urban areas in developing countries is crime. Most people in slums are decent, honest people, and they are far more likely to be victims of crime than criminals. However, there is sometimes a political correctness that leads to crime being overlooked. One of the UN-Habitat documents that I read on its website before this debate is entitled ““Today's Slums: Myths versus Reality””. It states:"““Slums are often associated with crime, but in some places this is more a fabrication of the media than a reality.””" It is not a media fabrication if someone is a victim of crime—if someone is forced to be a drug mule for a drug baron in order to pay their debts or unpaid rent, or if someone is intimidated by a criminal gang as part of a protection racket or to secure their vote in an election. In the United Kingdom, crime is worst on our most deprived estates, even though the vast majority of people who live in those areas are perfectly honest, and it should come as no surprise that things are much the same in developing countries. Crime is highest where living conditions are worst. The development community cannot shy away from crime because of a form of political correctness; we must accept that law and order are vital for providing human security and an environment that allows economic development. The Commonwealth Parliamentary Association UK branch visited Jamaica last September. I attended its report-back meeting, and learned that in poor, inner-city Kingston there are places called garrison constituencies; they are parliamentary constituencies that are affiliated year in and year out with one or other of the main political parties—both of them are involved in the same way. Poor people support the party in anticipation of benefits that might accrue to them: access to employment, getting their child into school, or other basic services. At one stage removed from the politicians are criminal gangs that use violence to maintain the status quo. I spoke this morning to Andrew Tuggey, the secretary of the CPA UK branch. Before he came to work for the CPA branch in Parliament, he served as an Army officer in Northern Ireland. He drew a parallel between the situation in Kingston now, and the situation in Belfast in the early 1970s. Two things are vital to overcome those problems of politically related crime and violence in slums in developing countries. The first is effective security. The United Kingdom has seconded two assistant chief constables to the Jamaica police, and we also provide some training for the Jamaica defence force. The second thing is political reform. A new younger generation of politicians in Jamaica, in both parties, is pressing for change. Kingston city council's urban renewal policy, for instance, has stressed the need to build social housing in both green and yellow garrison constituencies, irrespective of political allegiance, and to allocate housing centrally, not through the constituencies. There are policy lessons to be drawn. I have been helped in forming my thoughts by an article by Dr. Aldrie Henry-Lee of the university of the West Indies, which appeared in a journal called Environment and Urbanisation last October. First, politicians must be divested of the power to distribute scarce benefits, including, as happens in many developing countries, budgets for buying small projects and works in their constituency. If they are seen as people who dispense favours or services from funds that they personally control, a form of clientism is bound to develop. Secondly, politicians must have nothing to do with criminal or violent gangs, or the leaders of those gangs, even if the latter appear to be a leadership divorced from the gangs themselves. Thirdly, politicians must identify any members of their party who associate with criminals, and deprive them of office, if they hold it, in the party or publicly. Fourthly, they must make sure that their security forces and municipal authorities give no protection to gang members. Finally, and importantly, as in this country, the police must provide protection to those who supply them with information about wrongdoing and act as witnesses when cases come to court. Perhaps what is happening in Kingston sounds a little like Chicago or Sicily: it is. The solution to the problem is the same. There is a need to clear out the corrupt politicians and introduce a new, clean politics. The week before last DFID published its consultation document seeking input to the White Paper that it intends to publish in the summer. I hope that today's debate will be seen as part of that consultation process, and that the White Paper will closely examine the importance of good governance and political reform—the Department has already made it clear that it will tackle that issue—as well as developing the capacity of local government to deal with the severe urban problems. Without stronger local government in developing countries they will not rise to the challenge of creating decent conditions in which people can live and prosper in the growing cities of the developing world.