Stephen O'Brien MP: Let's steer our development resources towards combating malnutrition

Stephen O’Brien is the Member of Parliament for Eddisbury, the Prime Minister’s Envoy and UK Special Representative for the Sahel, a former DFID Minister and Co-Chair of the Conservative Friends of International Development.

I strongly welcome the launch, this week, of UNICEF’s significant and hard-hitting report on child nutrition. The report identifies both the key statistics and evidence from across the world about child nutrition rates, with particular regard to pre-natal care, breastfeeding, and various vitamin and mineral consumptions; and also outlines how, as a global community, we can tackle the pressing issues of child malnutrition and stunting. These are vital concerns which I have seen on my countless visits over the last 35 years to some of the most challenged and vulnerable parts of the world, especially in Africa, but also in Central and South America, in the Middle and Far East, and in the Indian sub-continent. The prominence of child (mal)nutrition has emerged strongly in the last few years amongst development partners, international organisations and NGOs. It was a key part of my focus during my time as an International Development Minister and, in my current role as the Prime Minister’s Envoy and UK Special representative to the Sahel in North and West Africa, it remains so now.

Stunting is the irreversible impact of not receiving enough nutritious food within the first 1000 days of life, from pregnancy to a child’s second birthday. Staggeringly, there are today around 165 million stunted children around the world – more than one quarter of the world’s children under age five are unable to develop physically or mentally as they should. Whilst the vast majority of children in the UK are well fed and nourished, the situation in many developing countries is in stark contrast, as 90% of children affected by malnutrition and stunting live in Africa and Asia. The link to extreme poverty is incontrovertible – as children in the poorest communities are more than twice as likely to be stunted, particularly in rural areas where as many as one third of children are affected. In addition to this, every year 2.3 million children die of malnutrition.

Stephen O'Brien MP: Cuts to the EU budget should be focused on inefficient areas. Overseas aid is not one of them.

Stephen O’Brien is the Member of Parliament for Eddisbury, the Prime Minister’s Envoy and UK Special Representative for the Sahel, a former DFID Minister and Co-Chair of the Conservative Friends of International Development.

The case for a smaller European Union budget is clear: at a time of belt tightening across the continent it is wrong that countries are being asked to contribute more to Brussels. European governments are attempting to do more with less – the EU should do likewise. The Prime Minister will be speaking for ordinary European citizens when he stands up for this at today’s leaders’ summit.

As Conservatives we should make clear which parts of the EU budget should be protected, and which parts should face the biggest cuts. We should push for cuts to be focused on long-time follies such as the inefficient Common Agricultural Policy. We should also make a strong argument for protecting areas where the EU has added value, such as the small fraction spent on overseas aid programmes that are delivering results for some of the world’s poorest people. The prospect – put on the table by Herman van Rompuy – that the proposal for the European Development Fund will be cut by 11% while the EU’s own administration budget is reduced by just 0.85% is a classic example of wrong-headed Brussels thinking.

There are three reasons why Conservatives should support EU aid. First, it is essential to bringing other European countries up towards the 0.7% promise that the UK will deliver on in 2013. The leverage effect is significant as many countries don’t have the capacity to scale up their own aid spending domestically. It is a leverage effect with no net cost to the British taxpayer – if we reduce our aid spending through the EU we will reallocate it elsewhere as part of our 0.7% commitment with no obligation for other countries to match us. The Prime Minister said that through the G8 Presidency the UK will "be holding other countries to account for their [aid] promises too". The EU budget negotiations are a critical vehicle for this effort.

Stephen O'Brien MP: The end of life care strategy

Stephen O’Brien MP is the Shadow Health Minister and MP for Eddisbury. The Conservative Palliative Care Policy is included in ‘The Patient will see you now, Doctor’.

Politics lends itself to the imagery of death – to topple a minister is to ‘gain a scalp’, to broach certain topics is ‘career-death’, the New Labour version of spin is to “bury” bad news, and, of course, we all are waiting for this Prime Minister to be ‘stabbed in the back’.

Yet I have no doubt that politicians are at one with our constituents in avoiding considering our actual mortality and that of our nearest and dearest, and the Government’s End of Life Care Strategy makes welcome mention of that fact – with fewer people dying at home (one in five of the 500,000 that die each year, as against the two thirds who would like to), our experience of death has been relegated to fictional narratives and inoculating news cycles.

‘Dying isn’t a very sexy subject for news editors’ - Janet Street Porter in the Independent echoes in Alan Johnson’s complaint, but Thursday’s papers rose manfully to the debate with both the Mail and the Times including moving personal accounts of death and dying, alongside broader news and comment articles.
The broad thrust of the Government’s End of Life Care Strategy is to support rapid response palliative care teams to enable people to stay in their own homes as they approach the end of their lives, based the Marie Curie delivering choice pilot, underpinned with £88m in 2009/10 and £198m in 2010/11.

Stephen O'Brien MP: The latest NHS IT shambles

Stephen O’Brien, MP for Eddisbury and Shadow Minister for Health, questions the future of the supercomputer programme in light of Fujitsu terminating its contract.

In September 2003, Patricia Hewitt said:

“The principle, the civil liberties and the practicalities of great big IT projects and databases have a horrible habit of going wrong.”

Yesterday it transpired that the Government are terminating the contract with Fujitsu to deliver the NHS IT programme to the South East and South West of England. It seems that in the Government’s attempt to ‘reset’ the contract (code for ‘pouring more taxpayers’ money in’), Fujitsu have decided that they cannot deliver what is asked at the price given to them, and they intend to cut their losses, after what will no doubt be an ugly legal scuffle.

The question before us is, does this put in jeopardy the whole ‘supercomputer’ programme - the core of which is to create a national electronic patient record database, to enable hospital appointments to be booked electronically, and prescriptions to be created and administered electronically - and how much of a problem is that?