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Democratic Republic of Congo

I am delighted to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Hancock, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Falkirk (Mr. Joyce) on having raised a very important debate. The moving speeches made by my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Surrey (Mr. Hunt) and the hon. Members for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) and for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) have enabled us to understand the dramatic and traumatic effect that the horrendous conditions they witnessed had on them. We appreciate the way in which they were able to express that in the debate. Never having visited the DRC, I cannot replicate that, but I can bring something to this debate by putting some pressure on the Government and requesting information from the Minister. We look forward to what he has to say. When I started my preparation for this debate, I did as I always do and looked at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office country profile for the DRC. It says:"““The DRC is ranked near the bottom, 168 out of 177 countries, on the Human Development Index. All the socio-economic indicators are poor, made worse by the last 10 years of war. The education system is in a state of collapse, and the public health system is reportedly a disaster. In December 2002, donors pledged some US$2.5 billion for reconstruction.””" I shall return to that amount, because it is a huge figure. The profile continues with a description of what is happening today:"““The UK has been part of the international community's efforts to address basic humanitarian needs in the DRC. Britain has provided support for DDR (demobilisation, disarmament and re-integration) of the various armed groups and funded quick-start programmes to provide health and education to war-affected parts of the country. The UK increased its assistance to help rebuild the country to £40 million pa in 2004/05 and 2005/06.””" That is a recognition by the Government of the dreadful state of that country. As a number of hon. Members have mentioned, the DRC is well endowed with minerals. It has diamonds—at one stage it was the fourth largest producer of industrial diamonds in the world—gold, coltan, which the hon. Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn) mentioned, and cassiterite. Its forest cover is abundant and rich, if it is sustainably managed, and there are rich agricultural lands. However, as is true of so many other African countries, the DRC's economy needs to be managed properly and to start producing if its dependence on aid is to be reduced. Surprisingly, I entirely endorse what the hon. Member for Islington, North said about exploitation. It is clear that there has been exploitation by the mining companies, in part because mining takes place in conflict areas. Much of what is produced is smuggled out of the country by the various militias, with not even a penny benefiting DRC's economy. However, exploitation has also taken place because DRC has not had the resources to police mining properly. All such problems require western aid, help and advice to be rectified. If the country could rectify those problems, it could start on the path to prosperity. As the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) mentioned, some foreign aid is beginning to flow into the country. We must ensure that that transition is sustainable and that it benefits the economy of DRC. One the tragic things that I learned in preparation for this debate—we have not heard much about it today—is that the habitat of lowland gorillas, which were never particularly numerous, is now so damaged that their number has been reduced to a mere 3,000. Human rights must always be paramount, but let us hope also that one of the things that comes out of the election is a reversal of that environmental damage. As has been said, the DRC is Africa's second largest economy south of the Sahara. It has 56 million people, 56 per cent. of whom are Christian. The DRC held a successful referendum in December 2005. If that is an indication of what might happen in the election in June 2006, it bodes well. My hon. Friend the Member for South-West Surrey said that 26 million people had already registered for those elections, which is a positive sign. If we can build on that by working with the 16,000 or so members of the UN peacekeeping force who are already in the country and encouraging the European Union not to place its 1,200 to 1,500 troops outside the country in case of an emergency, but instead put them inside the country to prevent potential abuses in the election, that would also be helpful. What else is to be done? The World Bank has produced a huge package of $2.9 billion of aid ahead of the elections, but with strings attached. The Opposition will vigorously hold the Government to account on how that aid is spent and what improvements it will bring. In too many African countries we spend millions of pounds in aid, yet the people are getting poorer. Gross domestic product in the DRC fell from $380 per person in 1960 to $115 per person in 2004, and 80 per cent. of the people still live on less than $1 a day. There is absolute evidence from other African countries that millions of dollars of aid are being put in, but people's standard of living is falling. Uganda is a case in point: in the past four years, the proportion of people living on less than $1 a day has increased from 30 per cent. of the population to 40 per cent., yet millions of pounds worth of aid has been put into the country. We have to get a bit clever about using aid—we must set specific targets and make further aid dependent on their being reached.