Harriett Baldwin MP: Why we must help to end malnutrition

Harriett Baldwin is the Member of Parliament for West Worcestershire and a member of the Work and Pensions Select Committee.  Follow Harriett on Twitter.

Extreme poverty has been halved in the world since 1990.  The number of children who die needlessly each year has fallen from 12 million to under 7 million.  Britain's international aid has played a major role in this success and, this is something of which many of my constituents are rightly proud.

But growth in its most literal sense is still a major challenge – the lack of physical growth from malnutrition which is called stunting.  Every year, malnutrition kills more than two million children – accounting for at least a third of all preventable child deaths.  Malnutrition can irreversibly stunt the development of millions more. It leaves them unable to fight off illness and less able to work and learn. In total, one in four of the world’s children are stunted because they couldn’t get the nutrients they needed in the crucial first thousand days. They are not only left physically weaker, but their cognitive development also suffers and on average they lose 10 per cent of their lifetime earnings.

According to new research from Save the Children, chronically malnourished children are on average almost 20 per cent less literate than those who have a nutritious diet.  In Ethiopia, one of the countries where the research was carried out, a shocking 44% of children are stunted. When I visited the country last year, I met mothers and children at a nutrition centre and saw with my own eyes the devastating physical impact of malnutrition.  But the economic impact is just as devastating. Some countries lose 2–3 per cent of their GDP as a result of malnutrition.

The Government deserves credit for recognising that malnutrition is the Achilles heel of global development, and that momentum to reduce poverty in recent decades will stall if the world fails to act. David Cameron and Justine Greening are hosting a summit on 8 June – Nutrition for Growth – to bring world leaders together to drive ambitious action to address the crisis of malnutrition.  As we approach this summit, the international community stand at a crossroads. Investing in nutrition now as a down-payment on future prosperity will lead to huge benefits for millions of children – and for the global economy. But if we fail to take advantage of this opportunity, we will fail a generation of children – and diminish the prospects of many countries and their people.

Now is the time for the UK to use the international standing our leadership on aid has afforded us – in order to leverage greater investment from other developed countries.  Many international donors, including some of our European partners, are falling short.  Globally, less than 0.4% of the aid budget is spent on nutrition, despite a wealth of evidence that it is one of the best development investments we can make.  It is also vital that middle income countries who suffer high levels of malnutrition, such as India, are prepared to invest the proceeds of their growing economies in tackling malnutrition. In the final weeks ahead of the summit, I hope DFID and the Prime Minister use their considerable diplomatic skills to encourage other world leaders to step up to the plate. 

Harriet Baldwin MP & Natalie Elphicke: A Building Society ISA to boost Britain’s homebuilding

Harriett Baldwin is the MP for West Worcestershire. Prior to entering parliament, she worked for JP Morgan for over 20 years.

Natalie Elphicke is a non-executive director of a leading building society and a published policy writer on housing and housing finance with Policy Exchange and the Centre for Policy Studies. She was the first national director of the new Conservative Policy Forum.

Savings can support housebuilding and boost growth. Ahead of this budget, the CBI and the building societies association have been looking at ways in which savings could be put to work to build more homes and help first time buyers through a housing deposit ISA and a housing ISA. A housing deposit ISA would help first time buyers who are saving for a deposit for their first home. A housing ISA would help savers and build more homes.

The housing ISA proposal to build more homes is simple. There would be a higher threshold than for a current cash ISA. Funding for Lending is targeted to expand mortgages. The government housebuilding guarantee programme assists larger developers and housing associations. The proceeds for the housing ISA would be targeted at self-build, small and medium sized developers, smaller housing associations, and community building projects, such as community land trusts.

Harriet Baldwin MP: Use childcare subsidies to get women back to work

Harriett Baldwin is the Member of Parliament for West Worcestershire and a member of the Work and Pensions Select Committee.  Follow Harriett on Twitter.

Warren Buffett, the ‘Sage of Omaha’ and the world’s third richest man, knows a thing or two about economics and wealth creation.  He made his $44 billion fortune from scratch by investing in companies for the long term.

On the BBC Radio 4 Today programme between Christmas and New Year, he made some remarkable comments about women and their untapped potential to help Western economies grow.

He told listeners: "Women have been subjugated since time immemorial”. Speaking about his own sisters, he noted they were:  "Two human beings with enormous potential and it was assumed they could be a nurse or a secretary or a flight attendant. Or they could be a teacher – but not in upper education. What a waste of human talent – 50 per cent of the population was pushed off into the corner for two hundred years."

But he said he was now upbeat. "I see how far we've come using only half the talent in the country and now we're getting to the point that we are using 100pc. It makes me optimistic but we still have a way to go".

Harriett Baldwin MP: We're getting closer to the day when every Ethiopian child has clean water and a nutritious meal

Harriett Baldwin is the Member of Parliament for West Worcestershire and a member of the Work and Pensions Select Committee.

We hear a lot about austerity Britain at the moment and this week we heard about drought in South East England.  And yet we take it for granted that if we turn on a tap, fresh drinking water will pour out. We take it for granted that we can access flushing toilets that will hygienically dispose of our waste. In every corner of Britain, those on even the lowest incomes can buy cheap, nutritious staple foods like bread, milk, eggs, iodized salt, fortified cereals, beans and fruit.

During last week’s parliamentary recess, I travelled with Save the Children to Ethiopia, a poor country which is enjoying double-digit rates of economic growth but where nearly half of children aged under 5 have stunted physical growth because of malnutrition.

We are all familiar with Ethiopia from the famines in the mid 80s that inspired Live Aid. But when the world’s attention moves on, it is important that we recognise the ongoing work that is done by NGOs and government programmes to prevent emergencies from re-occurring.

I visited an emergency nutrition stabilisation centre in the Afar region of Ethiopia which was providing a high energy infant food called Plumpynut to severely malnourished children. Water is virtually non-existent in this region, and the two rainy periods each year are essential to replenish the meagre wells.  By working in 15 remote districts of this desperately poor part of the country, the Save the Children team, working with local government, are reaching the most acutely malnourished children and pregnant mothers.  In the centre I visited, deaths had been entirely prevented.  In a country where over 12 per cent of children die before their fifth birthday, this is a significant achievement.  A local government representative told me, “Without this project, many, many children would be dead.”  Seeing with my own eyes the tightrope between life and death that these families must walk every day and the essential, life-saving help delivered by Save the Children, I am proud that the UK is a major donor of the United Nations Humanitarian Response Fund that enables this programme to exist.

Harriett Baldwin MP: Welfare could be localised and extra children shouldn't always mean more benefits

Seven Conservative MPs have teamed up with the Centre for Policy Studies and ConHome to propose ideas to turbo charge the UK economy. Yesterday Karen Bradley recommended a set of tax cuts. Today Harriett Baldwin outlines controversial reforms to welfare.

Harriett Baldwin is MP for West Worcestershire and a member of the Work and Pensions Select Committee.

Taxing those in work to pay out of work benefits that act as a disincentive to work is not helpful to growth.

The complexity of benefits is well known. It can take a Job Centre Plus advisor 45 minutes to calculate whether a claimant would be better off in work.  Often they are not.

The welfare system has a range of deterrents to work: in some cases, a single mother would be 4 pence better off for every additional £1 she earned. The welfare system incentivises a leap from 0 hours to 16 hours but no further.

An out of work housing benefit recipient has the comfort of knowing that the rent is going to be covered.  Once work starts, there would be a real fear of the risk of arrears if the move into work turned out to be unsuccessful.

Welfare Reform will start sweeping this away. It is estimated by the government that it will make 2.7 million households better off and lift 1 million people out of poverty, including 350,000 children. From 2013 onwards, all new claimants for JSA, Housing benefit, Child Tax Credit, Working Tax Credit, Income Support and ESA will receive a single Universal Credit. Each hour they work and each pound they earn will have a clear, direct link with additional net income.

Harriett Baldwin MP: Why it is high time we abolished the gender gap in the State Pension age

Harriett Baldwin is MP for West Worcestershire and a member of the Work and Pensions Select Committee.

I’ll start by declaring an interest.  I’m a 51-year old woman, and so far in my working life I’ve seen my State Pension age rise from 60 to 65 and now, in the Pensions Bill, up to 66.  So I’ve been looking at the history and the arguments surrounding the proposed changes.

When the contributory State Pension first began in 1926, men and women both had a State Pension age of 65.  Life expectancy in the early 1920s was less than 65.

It was the Old Age and Widows Pensions Act 1940 which lowered women’s State Pension Age from 65 to 60. Debates at the time suggest that one of the reasons was that women’s domestic responsibilities on top of their paid work were felt to leave them ‘tired’ at 60, and there was also the perception that women were economically dependent on a husband and that he would be approximately five years older.

Can you imagine what would happen today if there were a Bill today that created such an inequality and what an outcry there would be? 

Harriett Baldwin MP: This St George's Day, it is high time we resolved the "English Question"

Harriett Baldwin is MP for West Worcestershire.

Imagine if the May 5th national referendum on the Alternative Vote is carried by a majority of votes from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.  England votes No.

Imagine if at the next General Election, no party wins an overall majority and a coalition is formed that relies on a majority of MPs from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.  England gives another party a majority.

Neither of these scenarios is remote or implausible.  Lord Forsyth has written about the first scenario here, while the latter was a possible outcome at the General Election last May and was seen by some as a viable alternative to our present coalition Government.

Both these entirely plausible scenarios illustrate a growing problem.  With more and more matters devolved to Stormont, the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly, Westminster legislation increasingly affects England only.  Yet all Westminster MPs vote on all legislation.

Harriett Baldwin: Why I want to help answer the West Lothian Question

Harriett Baldwin was elected MP for West Worcestershire at the general election.

I drew Lucky Number 7 in the Private Member's Bill ballot and have chosen to tackle an issue that I think we need to resolve early in this Parliament.  This is the so-called “West Lothian Question”, where MPs for Scottish constituencies can vote on issues which may only apply to English and Welsh residents.   With a referendum approaching on devolving further powers to Wales, the problem may soon become even more pertinent.

I approach the West Lothian issue as a devoted supporter of the Union and a great believer in localism.   In a coalition government with a strong localist programme of legislation, I think it will be helpful to establish early on how this issue will be addressed by the government.

The Conservative manifesto stated:

“Labour have refused to address the so-called ‘West Lothian Question:  the unfair situation of Scottish MPs voting on matters which are devolved.  A Conservative government will introduce new rules so that legislation referring specifically to England, or to England and Wales, cannot be enacted without the consent of MPs representing constituencies of those countries.”

Now, of course we did not win an overall majority to implement this pledge, but the issue still remains on the government’s agenda, albeit perhaps further down the line.  The coalition programme for government states:  

“We will establish a commission to consider the ‘West Lothian question”.

Budget Day: Our panel members give their verdict

This morning we posted the Budget hopes of ConservativeHome's expert panel of political figures and commentators in their respective areas of interest or expertise. Did Alistair Darling deliver what they hoped for? Their responses will be posted during the course of the afternoon.

5pm

Jill Kirby, Director of the Centre for Policy Studies, on The Family

This Budget was an insult to our intelligence - who would believe the Chancellor's growth forecasts? But it was also an insult to families.

Darling refused point blank to accept the failure of the tax credit scheme, claiming it was helping families through the recession. So, you might be living through the worst downturn in peacetime, but if your hours are cut as a result then (provided you can face entangling yourself with all the bureaucracy and form-filling whenever your circumstances change) you might get a bit more working tax credit.

And the Chancellor's answer to child poverty? Child tax credit will go up by (wait for it) nearly 40 pence a week from 2010. Wow. Using that old Brown trick, Darling announced that the credit would "increase by £20"- failing to add that he meant £20 A YEAR - so the casual listener might think he meant £20 a week. A cheap trick.

Conservative Home's expert panel previews the Budget

In advance of today's Budget, ConservativeHome assembled an expert panel of political figures and commentators to outline what they hope to see from today's Budget in their area of interest or expertise. Their thoughts are below and once Alistair Darling has delivered the Budget, we will post their reactions here on Platform later this afternoon.

Andrew Lilico, Managing Director of Europe Economics, on Growth

The Budget should be realistic about the growth situation - planning against a recession at least as bad as the early 1980s and a material fall in the sustainable growth rate of the economy (to perhaps just 2-2.25%), cutting our spending cloth accordingly.  The Government should admit that on a recession that bad its previous plans would take spending above 50% of GDP, and that this is unacceptable. 

To keep down the growth of spending as a proportion of GDP, it should immediately announce a £50bn reduction in growth in spending between 2008-9 to 2010-11 (e.g., by freezing the cash budget of most departments), with a commitment to seek further reductions of up to £50bn, if necessary, for later years.

In addition, the annual inflation targeting regime should be replaced with a target of average inflation at 3% annually between now and 2015 - with the inflation measure changed to include housing costs.