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Queen's Speech

My Lords, the economy is one of the most fraught issues facing this country, this Government and Administrations worldwide. At a time when economic pressures urge us to consider our own financial hardships, there is a risk that that we will forget and forsake the need of those in the developing world. That need is not only for international aid, charity or benevolence. It is a need to address the unfairness in trade relationships between developing or producing countries and consuming countries, such as the United Kingdom. Multinational corporations bring important work, income and opportunities to the developing world. This is a relationship in which the need for cheaper labour meets the developing world’s need for work, employment and income. As we struggle to survive the recession, there is a very real danger that pressure will be increased on people in developing countries to subsidise us. What every recession has taught us is that the poorest of the poor, particularly in the third world, will be the hardest hit. We talk about the globalisation of trade, economics and commerce. We ought to ensure that there is more than fairness in the way in which we look at poverty. People throughout the world will work for poverty wages where there is a scarcity of jobs, and any work is better than no work. The food crisis and the global recession have exacerbated this. With no legal enforcement of workers’ rights and no negotiating power, the cost of labour is driven down, keeping the impoverished poor. There are at least 12.3 million people in forced labour in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and approximately a third of the world’s labour force works in the informal and unregulated market. The majority of the informal workforce is in developing countries and more than 80 per cent of those workers are women. We in the UK are direct beneficiaries of the continued impoverishment of communities in the developing world. In 2005, according to the World Bank, the wealthiest 20 per cent of the world’s population accounted for 76.6 per cent of total private consumption and the poorest fifth just 1.5 per cent. This boon for UK consumers has dire costs for us all. Apart from the moral dilemma of paying people poverty wages, the exploitation of poor workers has repercussions for us in the United Kingdom. First, as consumers, we have become accustomed to purchasing products at unrealistically low prices, and that has led to a pattern of impulse purchasing and increased waste. It must be unacceptable that a third of the world’s population hardly has sufficient food to eat and that one third has a subsistence-level existence. The rest of us are buying what is unnecessary and the food that we throw away could feed the hungry children and women of the world. An official government website notes that, if everyone in the world lived to the same standard as people in the United Kingdom, "““it’s estimated that three planets’ worth of resources would be needed to support us. The energy and materials wasted in the UK put pressure on the environment here and around the world””." This culture of consumerism, which thrives in part because of the low price of many of our products, is creating levels of waste that are unrealistic and a major contributor to global warming. The second consequence is the rise of a disenfranchised, marginalised people. Out of this economic unfairness grows dissatisfaction, and dissatisfaction is a breeding ground for extremism, terrorism and violence. This is a lesson that we continue to learn in different parts of the world. The current financial meltdown presents us with an opportunity to rethink and re-examine our trade, business and consumption practices and how they impact on those in the developing world, and indeed to question our whole lifestyle. There are two global movements in which the United Kingdom has a pivotal role. The first is the achievement of the millennium development goals and the second is the work of the UN special representative on human rights, transnational corporations and other business enterprises. The first millennium development goal is to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger by reducing by half the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day, achieving full and productive employment and decent work for all, including women and younger people, and reducing by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger. Achieving this goal requires not only aid but also co-operation with the UN special representative on human rights, Professor John Ruggie, who has worked on providing greater protection for individuals and communities against corporate-related human rights abuses. I urge Her Majesty’s Government to consider that the sustainability of the millennium development goals should depend not on benevolence and charity but on fair labour practices and the ability to organise decent wages for all.