That this House takes note of (1) the impact of the Russian blockade of Ukrainian ports on food insecurity in developing countries, and (2) its contribution to the danger of famine in (a) the Horn of Africa, and (b) East Africa.
My Lords, in opening today’s debate I should like to thank all noble Lords who are going to take part, especially the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwell and Nottingham, who will make his maiden speech. I couple those thanks with my thanks to the House of Lords Library, Dr Ewelina Ochab, the World Bank and others who have provided us with such excellent briefing material. I draw attention to my non-financial interests, including being a patron of the Coalition for Genocide Response and co-chair of the APPG on Eritrea.
Our debate is taking place as Russia, Iran, and Turkey, with its responsibility under the 1936 Montreux convention for naval traffic entering the Black Sea, have been meeting in Tehran. Turkey has proposed that Russia allows Ukrainian grain ships to leave Odessa on designated routes—grain corridors—so long as checks are made that the ships are not carrying arms. Beware Putin, broken promises, blackmail and Potemkin village scams.
This debate is also taking place against a backdrop of mass displacements, thousands of deaths and devastation, all unleashed by Putin’s war on Ukraine, with Europe left facing its worst energy and economic crisis since the 1940s. The war’s effects reverberate around the globe: food price inflation and supply disruptions from the war in Ukraine have left millions, in Africa especially, vulnerable to famine and starvation.
In 1988, before the collapse of the Soviet Union, I visited Ukraine and met political and religious leaders, some of whom had spent nearly two decades in the Kremlin’s prison camps. It was inspiring to watch people lay flowers each day at the doors of churches closed by Stalin 40 years earlier. They proudly held aloft their blue and yellow flags of defiance. Putin’s deluded idea that these brave people would now line the streets with flowers, cheering the new imperial occupation and the reconquest of their country, simply beggars belief.
My Lords, what a pleasure and privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, the breadth of whose interests matches the depth of his humanity, and how sobering that he should have begun by reminding this House of the Holodomor, and the horrors and monstrosities experienced by Ukrainians. I recently read an eyewitness account of a hideous scene that unfolded in the spring of 1933 in the market in Kherson. It is almost unbearable to read, even after the passage of nearly a century. It concerned a dead mother with a still living infant, trying to suckle the last few drops. What was most shocking to the observers was that they had seen that exact scene many times before—it was no longer shocking to them. I think we can all agree in this House about what is happening in Ukraine and where the blame lies. This is a territory twice targeted by hunger, first by Stalin and then by Hitler. As the Yale historian Tim Snyder points out, it was the most dangerous place to live in the world between 1933 and 1945.
I should like to talk about how we respond. What do we do to lessen the effects of this disaster and, as importantly, what do we not do? First, do no harm, because something that alarms me is the way in which in every continent, on every archipelago, we hear people responding in a way that is emotionally understandable but intellectually very dangerous, by retreating into the illusion of self-sufficiency and protectionism. People will say that because world food supplies are being disrupted and prices are spiking, we need to be more self-sufficient—we need to grow more of our own food and be secure in our own supplies. That, it seems to me, is this worst possible response. If countries around the world begin to do this, they will exacerbate the problem and, indeed, tip the problem into a spiral of unmitigated calamity.
It is happening. Xi Jinping recently summoned a meeting of the rubber-stamp Parliament in Beijing and said, “We need to be self-sufficient in food. The lesson we must draw from this is that we cannot rely on the West”. He proposed setting aside 300 million acres of Chinese land purely for agrarian use, not to have to depend on international trade. Ukraine has, perhaps understandably, imposed a grain export limit, but it is being followed by other countries across Asia and Africa. If this carries on, we really do risk turning a problem into a calamity.
My Lords, it is fascinating to speak immediately after the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, whose contribution advocating global free trade was nothing if not passionate, and clearly extremely well-informed. It was a thought-provoking contribution, but perhaps one that did not speak to all the problems in the question raised by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, in this debate. Discussing insecurity and self-sufficiency might matter at certain times for certain countries, but the Horn of Africa and countries that are on the verge of starvation already are not saying that they must be self-sufficient. They are facing extreme poverty and food insecurity precisely because of manmade problems caused by the war led by Russia. Although there is a lot we can talk about around free trade and the ideas put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, I would like to take the House back to Ukraine, and think about the implications of this war and starvation as a weapon of war.
We are already five months beyond the Russian incursion into Ukraine—five months that appear to have gone very quickly. When the invasion happened, Ukraine was at the top of the headlines. People in western Europe were listening very closely; we were following everything that happened. Five months on, if you follow the British media, one would be hard pressed to know that there was anything going on other than two days of climate crisis—a heatwave—and a Conservative leadership campaign, one of the leading candidates being the Foreign Secretary. One wonders whether she has time to be doing the day job while vying to be Prime Minister, but I will leave that aside.
For five months, the Ukrainian people have sought to defend themselves. The food insecurity they are facing is manmade; it is caused by Russia. One of the questions I would like the Minister to think about and respond to is whether Her Majesty’s Government have looked at the 1977 protocols to the Geneva convention and the 1998 Rome statute of the ICC. Have Her Majesty’s Government thought about whether the actions of Russia could be tantamount to using starvation as a tool of war, and so potentially a war crime? If that is the case, should Russia be brought before the ICC on those grounds?
My Lords, I begin by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for introducing this very important debate at the very last minute, giving us all the opportunity to express our compassion for what is going on in Ukraine and, indeed, the rest of the world. The crisis is extremely serious and is, as we have heard, likely to spread, affecting the most vulnerable countries in the world.
As if the war in Ukraine and its consequences were not enough, there is also conflict in many other vulnerable countries, with the possibility of violent riots in Egypt, for example. There are exceptional world weather patterns of drought and floods, the long-term and profound effect of Covid on economies and Russia’s theft of grain from Ukraine’s stores to sell at inflated prices around the world. If this is not a perfect storm, what is?
We know that money is needed—and lots of it—to counteract rising prices of all commodities, including food and energy as well as transport. The sinister words of the editor in chief of the pro-Kremlin channel RT should alert us to possible Russian intentions; she said:
“The famine will begin and they will lift the sanctions”,
Russia is clearly playing a long game with thousands upon thousands of lives while shoring up its own war economy through inflated food and oil export prices.
We are tiptoeing around this vast country and its corrupt government. It seems that the job of the world’s diplomats is to avoid a catastrophic escalation of hostilities. Perhaps there have even been a grisly calculation of the number likely to die from starvation compared to the possibility of deaths from nuclear attack. However, unanimous international condemnation of Russia’s actions together with ever more stringent sanctions might provoke Mr Putin to sacrifice his own people under the false banner of national pride.
War has been accompanied by severe food shortage and even famine—the two are different—for millennia. Widespread famine has also occurred as a result of the failure of democracy. Between 1959 and 1961, 20 million Chinese died following Mao Tse-Tung’s industrial experiment, where every landowner throughout the country was forced to produce steel. Food supplies disappeared overnight. No one surrounding the great leader had the courage to let Mao know that his experiment was failing and causing the death of millions on the streets of China.
My Lords, I begin by thanking fellow Members for their gracious welcome and expressing my gratitude to the parliamentary staff and officers who have so kindly supported my introduction to the House.
It is an honour to make this maiden speech in such an important debate, which focuses so clearly on the needs of the most vulnerable: those affected by the sudden steep rise in global food prices resulting from Russia’s terrible war and blockade in Ukraine. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, both for bringing this debate to the House and for his long record of campaigning advocacy on behalf of those whose suffering is too often overlooked.
It is more than 12 years since a Bishop of Southwell and Nottingham has been in this House, although the previous bishop has been a passionate advocate for the poor and young since joining the House as my right reverend friend the Bishop of Durham. Nurturing the aspirations and potential of young people, particularly their influence and impact as future leaders, has long been a distinct feature of my own work, first for 17 years in parish ministry, including 10 as a vicar in south Buckinghamshire, then for 13 years as a bishop. I started out in west London as area Bishop of Kensington, and for the past seven years I have been a diocesan bishop in the east Midlands, where, along with my family, I now feel very much at home. It is my interest in the development of young people that underpins my contribution to the debate today.
Although the city and county of Nottingham are perhaps most famous for the folklore hero Robin Hood, the region has a long track record of nurturing many lesser-known heroes, who have none the less been world-shapers, championing the causes of the poor and the young; they include the inspirational founders of the Salvation Army, Catherine and William Booth. Since moving to the diocese, I have been inspired by modern heroes on the ground making a difference to the life chances and prospects of young people, proving that nurturing every talent matters.
My Lords, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, for his brilliant introduction to this debate. I also welcome my colleague, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwell and Nottingham, and congratulate him on his maiden speech. I know he has huge experience to offer to this House and will be drawing not least on the huge successes and, indeed, some of the challenges of the east Midlands, where he is based. We look forward to hearing much more from him.
Next Tuesday we will start the next Lambeth Conference. Hundreds of bishops are gathering from all round the world. They are flying into this country as we speak, including many bishops from the whole of Africa and parts of Asia, and we are going to be meeting many of these people who, in their dioceses, are facing the famine that is now ahead of us. We hope that will be an opportunity to get first-hand reports of what the challenges are and how we might be able to try to respond, to alleviate some of the terrible suffering facing our world and particularly the Horn of Africa.
Today’s debate is happening against the backdrop of the negotiations to unblock grain supplies, which we can only hope will be successful. The war in Ukraine is a powerful reminder of the interconnectedness of global supply chains, their propensity to collapse during times of conflict and the devasting far-flung consequences this can have. Relieving that blockade and the logistical backlog is to some extent a matter of life and death for many people in east Africa and one that demands an immediate breakthrough in the infrastructural solution for Ukrainian exports. The EU is working with us and others to establish solidarity lanes, which will provide additional transport stock, prioritise exports and create flexibility with respect to customs, alongside a much longer-term approach to increase Ukraine’s land-based infrastructure. It is going to require funding, not least from the USA and probably from us, if collectively we are going to maximise the amount of grain we can get out of Ukraine.
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate. I particularly congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwell and Nottingham on his most informative and, frankly, moving speech. We all much look forward to his future contributions in your Lordships’ House.
I warmly congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, on securing this debate, which is so timely as it underlines the brutality of Russia in threatening energy supplies to Europe and heading towards not only malnutrition but actual starvation of vulnerable people. I applaud the noble Lord, who always so admirably brings to the attention of your Lordships’ House human suffering and injustice, wherever they exist.
Last night, the think tank that I chair, the Council on Geostrategy, published a report titled Deepening British-Ukrainian Relations in a More Competitive Era. The foreword was signed by the Foreign Ministers of Ukraine and the United Kingdom. We have a relationship with Ukraine which began to take off most particularly in 2005 and has grown enormously since then. As I know, as a long-standing chairman of the British Ukrainian Society, there is huge personal admiration currently for our outgoing Prime Minister and his role in supporting Ukraine. But as I said last night in reassurance, and as I know is 100% supported by your Lordships, the freedom and security of Ukraine will, for us, be absolutely central irrespective of who the Prime Minister here is; of that, there is no doubt whatever.
We have heard the statistics. In peacetime 10% of global wheat exports come from Ukraine, 12% of maize and 37% of sunflower oil. There have been discussions under the United Nations umbrella, and particularly with the positive involvement of Turkey, to get food shipments out of Odessa, heading towards those parts of the Middle East and Africa which most particularly need wheat. It is truly shocking that Russia is, in practice, blocking real progress in this regard. Hints of positive movement have not been brought to fruition.
My Lords, I am deeply grateful, as always, for the piercing analysis and persistent pressure of the noble Lord, Lord Alton. He consistently reminds not just the House but the country, especially the Government, of what matters most to the heart and the mind. I also say at this juncture—I hope not just on my behalf but on behalf of the whole House—that we hope this is not the last time the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, answers a debate of this nature. He is hugely loved and appreciated across the House and we hope he stays in post—please note, those who have responsibility.
This is a difficult debate. We are talking with huge anxiety about issues we can barely affect. One of the reasons for that is the ineptitude of the United Nations as an organisation. I encourage the Minister to depart from his brief, if he feels able, and express a view. The UN Security Council, which ought to be able to discuss and decide how to respond to crises of this nature, has a permanent member whose veto will ensure that no action is possible. We may continue to wring our hands for the next few years or decades, but do we not need to come to a point at which the free countries of the world, which we hope will maintain a generous engagement and involvement in the world’s development for the poorest, make a decision about the right to reside in the UN Security Council?
At what point does the post-war settlement have to change? What thinking have Her Majesty’s Government put into the prospects of a long war in Ukraine, driven by Russia’s evil intentions and our inability to take action? We must stare at our enemy across the circle in New York and simply utter platitudes that cannot get decisions. That is not something that I or any of us can give a straight answer to, but if government is not thinking about it, we are all in trouble. Government needs to think about it.
Two friends asked me this morning why I am speaking in a debate on Ukraine; it is not my normal area of interest. Africa definitely is, however, and I remind the House of my roles as a vice-president of UNICEF, an ambassador for Tearfund, the chairman of the council of ZANE, the Zimbabwe aid agency, and a governor of the M-PESA academy in Nairobi, Kenya. One of our students, a wonderful young man from Somalia, graduated three weeks ago. He went back to the Kakuma refugee camp and immediately found that his mother was unable to afford his existence, simply because food prices had rocketed to such an extent in the matter of weeks that he had been absent—he was born in a refugee camp and lived with refugee status—that his mother was unable to feed him. We assisted and all will be well, but it brought it home in such sharp relief: ordinary people struggling with difficult and complex backgrounds are fighting again for the basics of survival.
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An abiding memory from that time is of conversations with families who had personally experienced Stalin’s Holodomor, which translates to “death by hunger”, and had occurred 50 years earlier from 1932 to 1933. Stalin’s Holodomor, like Putin’s today, was an entirely man-made catastrophe, leading to anything from 3.5 to 5 million deaths and is regarded by many historians as a genocide. The Holodomor was methodically planned and executed by denying the producers of the food the sustenance necessary for survival. It seems especially cruel and perverse to have used food as a genocidal weapon in the breadbasket of Europe.
While people were starving to death, the Soviet state stole over 4 million tonnes of Ukraine’s grain, enough to meet the needs of 12 million people in a year. As Ukrainians resorted to eating grass, acorns and even cats and dogs, Stalin banned any reference to famine. His decree of “Five Stalks of Grain” stated that anyone, even a child, caught taking produce from a collective field, could be shot or imprisoned for stealing socialist property. In 1933, 2,000 people were executed.
The Holodomor, also known as the Terror Famine, was caused by a dictator who wanted to replace Ukraine’s small farms with state-owned collectives and punish independence-minded Ukrainians who posed a threat to his totalitarian authority. Does that sound familiar? Today, in a mirror image of Stalin, it is Putin committing food terrorism by purposefully destroying Ukraine’s agricultural infrastructure and stealing Ukrainian grain and agricultural machinery. Last week, we saw vivid footage of his militias setting fire to fields, scorching the earth and reducing crops to ash. Along with the blockading of ports, this is using food as a weapon of war—a war crime. The weaponising of mass hunger is straight out of Stalin’s playbook. Protocols added to the Geneva conventions state:
“Starvation of civilians as a method of combat is prohibited”.
The Rome statutes of the ICC codify it as a war crime and the 2018 Security Council Resolution 2417 condemned the use of food insecurity and starvation as a tactic of war and laid duties on the Secretary-General when such situations occur.
When the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, who will reply to our debate, recently met Karim Khan QC, the ICC prosecutor, I wonder what he learned about the prosecution of those responsible for this and other war crimes, including the mass killings and atrocities in Mariupol, Bucha and elsewhere, the use of cluster munitions and much more besides. Notwithstanding vetoes, how are the Secretary-General and the UN Security Council holding Russia to account for its violation of Resolution 2417?
Putin’s militias and missile strikes have damaged and destroyed many farms, stocks of food and seeds, silos, warehouses, oil depots and agricultural machinery and equipment. Unharvested winter crops across many of the war-affected areas have resulted in an estimated $1.4 billion of damage. Will seized Russian assets be used to provide restitution and reconstruction?
In addition to destruction, there are credible reports of Putin’s military looting around 500,000 tonnes of grain from the occupied territories of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions—a third of the stocks required for sowing and domestic consumption. The grain is then shipped from the Russian-controlled Crimean port of Sevastopol and from the port of Berdyansk. To date, satellite imagery has identified 41 bulk carriers, mostly under Russian or Syrian flags, transporting plundered grain. The BBC says that in many instances these ships switch off their automatic identification system transponders to hide the origins of the looted food.
Now put this into context. The scale and nature of Ukraine and Russia’s role in global food supplies is phenomenal. As such, the lack of access to Ukraine’s grain has catastrophic global consequences. In 2021, the Russian Federation or Ukraine, or both, were ranked among the top three global exporters of wheat, barley, maize, rapeseed, rapeseed oil, sunflower seed and sunflower oil. Agriculture and food represent almost 10% of Ukraine’s GDP. Last year Ukraine exported food products worth almost $28 billion to the world, including $7.4 billion-worth of food to the European Union.
As many as 25 countries import more than one-third of their wheat from the two countries. Some 400 million people in the world depend on grain from Ukraine. This raises long-term questions about the need for greater diversification and about overconsumption by us in some parts of the world.
The immediate crisis, however, is best understood by figures from the Ukrainian Ministry for Foreign Affairs, which told me that 2021 saw a record-breaking grain harvest that collected 107 million metric tonnes, while so far this year Ukrainian farmers have threshed just 3.6 million tonnes of grain. Before the war, every month, Ukraine exported between 5 million and 6 million metric tonnes of agricultural products, 90% from the seaports on the Black Sea and the Azov Sea. In June, by using trucks, railways, rivers and its three Danube port terminals, which are all at capacity, it managed to export 2.1 million metric tonnes, but even with welcome adjustments it would take years to export the current stockpile of grain, let alone a new harvest, unless the sea routes can be reopened.
The war has also contributed adversely to a sharp rise in the cost of fertilisers and transportation. The cost of transporting one tonne of barley via the Romanian seaport of Constanta has risen from $40 to $160. Unsurprisingly, in May, the price index on cereal was up by 29.7% on May 2021 value, with wheat prices up on average by 56.2%. The UN food price index puts food prices at their highest since records began 60 years ago, with the World Bank reporting several countries introducing bans on the export of their wheat. This will all hit the poorest hardest. Between 2018 and 2020, Africa imported $3.7 billion-worth of wheat from Ukraine; some of those countries most dependent include Somalia, Libya, the Gambia, Mauritania, Tunisia and Eritrea.
As of June 2022, 89 million people, nearly one-third of the population, are food-insecure across east Africa, with pockets of famine-like conditions in Ethiopia, Somalia, and South Sudan. The World Food Programme says that a record 345 million people across 82 countries are facing acute food insecurity; that is up from 276 million at the start of this year. Up to 50 million people in 45 countries are on the verge of famine and 880,000 are already living in famine-like conditions in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan, and Yemen. The grain crisis has amplified an already precarious situation in an Africa beset by raging conflicts. Think of the man-made disaster in Tigray alone. It has amplified the drought, locusts and climate change that they all face. The OECD says that the cumulative impact will make it impossible to end hunger by the UN’s stated goal of 2030, and we can assume it will also add to the now 100 million displaced people—recent figures from the UNHCR—as they flee existing instability, riots and unrest. The International Committee of the Red Cross has scaled up its operations in 10 countries, including Somalia, Kenya, Nigeria and Burkina Faso, and says that
“more than a quarter of Africa’s people—346 million—are facing a food security crisis”.
It describes it as an “alarming hunger situation”.
The World Food Programme, which has seen a 44% rise in its operating costs, warns of an “unprecedented hunger challenge”. Noble Lords should read the exchange of 9 June between the House of Lords International Relations and Defence Committee and the Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss, in which we warn that the war in Ukraine has left
“millions of people facing an impending famine and starvation.”
In reply, the Africa Minister said:
“It is President Putin’s responsibility to lift this blockade so that Ukraine’s food can feed the starving.”
Yes, but we too have responsibilities, not least under the genocide convention, as we see the serious risk of genocide and Putin imposes conditions calculated to bring about the destruction of the group, in whole or in part. We also have responsibilities in the context of the cuts that we have made to our development and aid programmes. Never has the WFP’s funding gap been so wide. In 2021. the value of UK contributions to the WFP in east Africa stood at just over one-third of the 2018 value. In 2021, the value of contributions to the WFP in Somalia, where there are currently pockets of famine-like conditions, stood at just 9% of the 2018 value. In 2021, the value of contributions to the WFP in Sudan stood at 18% of 2019 funding. Does the scale of our response now meet the moment? No, it does not.
I hope the Minister will tell us what plans the Government have to increase humanitarian funding for food assistance programmes to reflect the increase in global food and fuel costs, which are driving up the operational costs of agencies such as the admirable World Food Programme. I hope he will elaborate on what plans we have to work through the G7 Global Alliance for Food Security to develop international solutions to the global food crisis. Specifically, is the £130 million pledge made to the World Food Programme on 24 June additional funding, and not to be diverted from other programmes? Can he confirm that, as indicated by Minister Cleverly on 5 July, the proportion to be provided as unearmarked funding will be additional to the FCDO’s core contribution to the World Food Programme?
For the sake of millions of beleaguered people in poor countries, beyond immediate famine relief, we must do all we can to help Ukraine survive this existential assault and restore its place as the breadbasket for millions of people. We must hotly dispute the outrageous, toxic Kremlin narrative that attempts to blame western democracies for food shortages and escalating prices. It may take years for Ukraine’s farm sector to fully recover from the invasion. Fields have been destroyed, poisoned or mined, and they have been cluttered with abandoned Russian trucks, tanks and munitions. Farmers’ livelihoods will be at risk if their ability to trade is not restored. There are practical things that can be done immediately; for instance, we should welcome and join the agreement signed on 29 June by Ukraine and the EU to speed up road freight transport and the opening of what the EU has called solidarity lanes to increase throughput at EU border checkpoints. We should also help in the development of GrainLine, a grain trading platform aimed at aligning supply and demand; then there is the railway system and the need for temporary grain elevators, all of which I am sure will be explored in this debate.
To conclude, this debate is an opportunity to reiterate our condemnation of Putin’s war; to shine a light on its consequences; to demand the withdrawal of his troops from Ukraine; to call for an end to the blockades of the Ukrainian ports and to relentlessly demonstrate how Putin has precipitated a humanitarian catastrophe through the worsening of world hunger, the use of starvation as a weapon of war and his complicity in a war crime. The message should go out loud and clear from this Parliament that consumer countries should not buy stolen, plundered Ukrainian grain; that we will document every illegal shipment of stolen grain and lay the evidence before the prosecuting authorities; that we will not be blackmailed by the Kremlin; and, in the absence of an agreement, that we will work with our allies under the auspices of the United Nations to open a Black Sea humanitarian corridor to enable functioning maritime routes for the export of Ukrainian agricultural goods. I beg to move.
It seems to me that we are responding, as people do, in a very natural, instinctive way. We want to have food supplies close at hand because we are still thinking with our palaeolithic brains. We want to have a hoard of food nearby to survive the winter, and we struggle with the reality of the modern globalised economy, which depends on this rather counterintuitive—in the literal sense—notion of depending for our key supplies on strangers whom we cannot see. That, however, is what has eliminated famine from the world. It was at the end of the 1960s, when countries, particularly in Asia and South America—and, to a degree, in Africa—began to understand that there was a difference between food security and self-sufficiency, that famine began to disappear as a regular feature of our lives.
The reality is that food security depends on having the broadest range of suppliers—the most diverse group of suppliers possible—so that you are immune to a local shock or disruption which might as easily take place in your own territory as anywhere else. But that idea goes to a mental blind spot. It offends our inner caveman, and runs up against these inherited instincts. I am afraid that I see the world devolving into more and more barriers, which means more and more hunger.
The tragedy is that this war has come just after a pandemic which primed those caveman instincts even more. I was shocked repeatedly during the lockdown by how many people who I had down as reliable free marketeers were suddenly saying to me, “Surely, Hannan, even you must now accept the need to grow more of our own food—even you must see that it’s very dangerous to be importing 40% of our food into this country”. Is that really what people got from the lockdown? Let us recall that it happened at the end of March 2020, at the beginning of what our farmers call the hungry gap: the time of year when we do not really produce much food in this country; when we have reached the end of the winter harvest and are not producing any more turnips, potatoes and cabbages, but have not reached the start of the main summer harvest. Between the end of March and the beginning of May, other than rhubarb, asparagus and maybe a little bit of purple sprouting broccoli, we basically do not produce food in this country—but fortunately it did not matter, because we were able to rely on global markets.
That same lesson applies in spades to countries which are poorer than us. They need access to cheap, accessible global food supplies rather than the illusion of self-sufficiency. To illustrate this, you might say in an extreme way, I give your Lordships the countries at the furthest ends of that spectrum. First, consider North Korea, the country that has turned self-sufficiency into its ruling principle. “Juche” is the idea that there should be import substitution and that you should grow and produce everything possible at home. It is the last place on the planet that still experiences manmade famines. At the other end of the scale is Singapore, which does not produce one edible ounce. Singapore is wholly reliant on imports for its drinking water, food and electricity. Where would you rather live? Singapore has the cheapest and most secure food supplies in the world because food security and self-sufficiency are not the same thing. It was understanding that difference that brought our planet to a level of prosperity that previous generations could not have imagined. The worst possible thing we could do would be to turn back the clock decades, or even centuries, and thereby return to the poverty that our ancestors took for granted.
I am proud to have played some role in persuading our Government to lift all tariffs on Ukrainian exports, setting a precedent for others to follow; I was very pleased that the European Union followed suit five or six weeks later. That is of great value to Ukraine at the moment, because it has no sea access and therefore all of its exports must pass through EU territory. Can we not extend the principle? At a time when the world is dealing with a cost of living crisis, and when every country and every continent is touched by the scourge of inflation, could we not extend that principle and remove trade and other non-tariff barriers to the free flow of basic commodities such as food? Tariffs and non-tariff barriers on food fall hardest on the people who are poorest, because they have to spend a higher proportion of their income on the basics.
The United Kingdom raised itself above the run of nations in Victorian times by being the first place to have unilateral tariff removal and to invite the traffic and commerce of the world without hindrance. Let us live up to what our ancestors did, and let us lead the world a second time.
The war in Ukraine shook Europe. It shook the very foundations of people like me: liberal, European integrationists who thought that European integration had kept the peace in Europe for 70 years, and that we were not likely to see war again in our continent. Lest anyone pop up to say, “But there was Bosnia, 30 years ago”, I have not forgotten that. For those of us in the United Kingdom, and in western and particularly central Europe, the invasion shocked us and raised a set of concerns. Very often, we hear that in other countries in other parts of the globe, Ukraine is still seen as a distant place and the reasons for the war are contested; in many ways, it appears that the consequences of the war are misunderstood. The assumption is that this is about the continent of Europe. But this goes far beyond Ukraine: it impacts global food security, and in particular it impacts the very poorest in the world.
I should like briefly to outline the impact of Ukraine on food insecurity and food supply, and then look at the wider global implications, particularly as they affect Africa. As we heard from my noble friend Lord Alton, much of global wheat supply has previously come from Ukraine and Russia. Ukraine exported its wheat through the Black Sea. That is no longer possible precisely because of the actions of Russia: deliberate actions for which we need to hold Russia accountable. I was shocked and surprised to hear my noble friend say that when the Minister for Africa responded to your Lordships’ International Relations and Defence Committee about Ukraine, she said, “Well, it’s Russia’s fault.” Russia may be the cause of this, but we all need to look for ways in which we can enhance food security and reduce the risk of famine and food insecurity in the African continent.
We have listened to parliamentary debates and the Conservative leadership campaigns. We keep hearing about the cost of living crisis, but fuel and food prices are also being inflated by the consequences of the war. It is desirable that we all look for ways to enhance Ukraine’s ability to continue producing food and exporting it. We have a very serious situation, which my noble friend already touched on.
I am grateful to Ewelina Ochab for a briefing she sent raising some of the issues that the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs had raised with her. I understand that the Minister met with a representative from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs during the International Ministerial Conference on Freedom of Religion or Belief, so those issues will not come as a surprise. The Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs is saying that there are credible reports of Russian troops on Ukrainian agricultural land, inevitably rendering it not fit for purpose and damaging agricultural produce, attacks on Ukrainian agricultural infrastructure and the high-level blocking of exports via the Black Sea. Putin is targeting grain and destroying crops, and then there is the question of looting. What assessment have Her Majesty’s Government made of the situation in terms of food security and the indications for Ukraine? There are 12 million displaced people in Ukraine, and many of them are facing food shortages.
Those shortages are compounded by a sense of compassion fatigue. I received two letters ahead of this debate from charities, Kaganek in Poland and Caritas in Lviv. Kaganek said that, at the start of the crisis, it was able to take a truck of food a week into Ukraine, and then built up to two trucks a week. In the first half of May, it sent 10 trucks, but now it is struggling to send one truck of food in a month. Why is that? Because donations are no longer forthcoming. Perhaps the media is not covering the crisis in the same way. Similarly, Caritas suggested that there has been a decrease in humanitarian aid estimated at 70%.
The Minister will reply not on behalf of the Foreign Office but of what is now the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. Does he feel that what Her Majesty’s Government are able to do to assist on a humanitarian basis in Ukraine is adequate? Does he believe what we are able to do in Africa is adequate? The House of Lords Library, in its excellent briefing, gave a response from Vicky Forde, the Minister for Africa, about what the UK is doing in Africa, and it is merely a drop in the ocean. What are Her Majesty’s Government doing in terms of aid, because we see potential catastrophe in Africa caused by the blockade of the Black Sea?
I have a final question for the Minister. In order to unlock the Black Sea, what conversations have Her Majesty’s Government had with President Erdoğan, and what does the Minister believe has come from the meeting in Tehran yesterday? The media seem more interested in the fact that Erdoğan kept Putin waiting for 50 seconds then the actual outcome. This should not be about the optics; it should be about clear and practical politics and getting solutions. This is in part about Ukraine, in part about a domestic cost of living crisis and, crucially, about the potential death by famine and starvation in the continent of Africa.
The great Bengal famine of 1943, during which 3 million people died, was in part due to a strict censorship in which the spread and scale of food shortage was hidden. The arrival of a free press following the famine, including in the vernacular, has guaranteed government accountability and a more equitable distribution of grain, even during periods of severe drought. It is very unlikely that famine would ever occur there again.
The end of the Soviet presence in Afghanistan came about when the mothers of the slaughtered soldiers began to realise the extent of their sacrifice through local information networks that flatly contradicted the propaganda being put out by the Soviets at that time. Although it is unlikely that there will be an avalanche of democratic institutions in Russia in the near future, every possible effort must be made to ensure that ordinary people in Russia, regardless of their long-standing animosity towards Ukraine and its people, are reliably informed about the war and able to communicate deep concerns about the progress—or not—of the fighting.
The other alternative is some kind of political compromise—something we are all reluctant to talk about. At the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we had brave words from the UK Government insisting that Russia must fail and that no compromise was possible. Thirty years ago, a sad rump of Soviet soldiers and coffins departed Afghanistan for their homeland. The cost of this failed occupation over more than a decade, not to mention the longer-term consequences, appeared far from victory for anyone, as we now know. Certainly, the Soviets failed, but what does success look like and is it worth the price?
Bombing a nation into submission, together with life-affecting sanctions, does not work as a strategy for winning wars. Can the Minister tell the House whether longer-term plans, including compromises, are being tabled, discussed and refined? As we go into the Summer Recess, is there a glimmer of hope that the world is beginning to unite against Russia as the wider consequences of food shortages reveal imminent disaster? What actions have been taken internationally to curb the price of Russian exports of food and oil? Are there serious efforts to supply alternative staple foods, such as rice—mostly from south-east Asia and India, presumably—for Lebanon, Yemen, Egypt and some countries in north Africa? Are the UK Government in discussion with international partners to build adequate food reserves for the immediate future, because food shortages are likely to become an endemic problem? Finally, would Russia, or indeed Ukraine, accept the sequestration of the Donbass region in the interest of providing more food security for the world?
What has struck me most is that, although parts of the city and county continue to struggle with higher than average levels of poverty, the aspirations of young people are rising. Their innate instinct to make a difference is far from parochial. Their outlook is global. They see themselves as part of an interconnected and increasingly interdependent world. That is why there should be no tension between charity at home and abroad. Their example inspires my engagement in this debate.
Compassion for those who suffer was characteristic of Jesus Christ. In the gospels, it is clear that he frequently surprised those around him by disturbing their inclination to limit the boundaries of who may qualify as a neighbour and how far their responsibility to care should extend. The lessons of the good Samaritan are rightly deeply imbedded into our spiritual heritage as a nation. I suggest that they should inform our urgent response to the crisis in the Horn of Africa and east Africa. This is no time to look away. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, there are now 7.1 million malnourished children in the Horn of Africa, with 2 million severely malnourished. The position is similar in east Africa.
I want to draw particular attention to how the needs of young people are disproportionately affected by the present food insecurity, not only their health but their education and life chances. Informed by some valuable links that churches in my diocese have with schools in Uganda, it is clear that the food crisis is already causing many schools to reduce their teaching week as they simply do not have enough food for the children in their care. According to the World Food Programme, one in three schoolchildren in Uganda has no food to eat during the school day. Feeding learners has become an essential priority for schools across that region. Families in desperate need also keep children out of school. Instead, they find themselves working to help earn a little more to pay for food, the cost of which has risen by nearly 14% since January. This is in a country that has the highest number of refugees and asylum seekers in Africa—nearly 1.6 million as of March. With acute malnutrition rising fastest among under-fives in the region, many thousands of children will not even reach school age.
This is not only a short-term crisis of survival. It has longer-term tragic consequences, undermining the capacity of a rising generation to be equipped with the education, skills and personal support that they need and deserve. There are tens of thousands of teachers in Uganda—and no doubt across the region—with a heartfelt and compelling vision for their students. They see the difference that a consistent, supportive and uninterrupted education can make to the future of the nation; it can also be a major contributor to food system resilience, which must be an important longer-term goal.
It is true that large sums have already been given, both bilaterally and through multilateral projects in these regions, but the need is now greater still. We should not wait until a famine is declared. Although I am thankful for some signs of progress that may result in the recent initiatives by the Turkish Government to provide safe passage for grain from Ukraine, I none the less ask the Minister this: will the Government consider increasing further bilateral aid to the Horn of Africa and east Africa without delay? It is not too late to save lives and prevent a devastating famine, with the unacceptable human cost that will result. In the long term, immediate intervention will improve the prospects and God-given potential of millions of young people across that region.
However, that is only half the story, the other half being the consequence this is having across the developing world, especially east Africa. While the situation in Ukraine has contributed to the appalling conflict and famine in east Africa, this is also the product of climate change, a severe drought and, of course, in some parts of Africa, the devastating effect of huge swarms of locusts, which have had a terrible impact.
The weather we have been experiencing this past week should be a stark reminder of how real climate change is and, while we may have experienced discomfort, rising global temperatures have much more serious consequences for most people. The confluence of all these factors, all of them human in origin, lie at the heart of the crisis in east Africa—a region with a history of famine—which makes our decision to cut some of our aid budget to those affected nations woefully misconceived.
Between 2019 and 2022, British humanitarian aid to Kenya fell by £21 million, to Sudan by £32 million and to Somalia by £18 million. Of course, aid is not the only answer. We need to try to develop trade and enable these countries’ economies to develop but we can and must respond to the immediate famine. If we are not persuaded of the moral case, it is in our own long-term interest because we are going to see huge displaced populations making their way to western Europe. It is in our interest to help them retain what they are doing and keep going.
This is a crisis that requires global intervention and support to prevent. One thing that is clear is that the crisis that is unfolding is not very well publicised. Christian Aid found that while 90% of people in the UK were aware of the war in Ukraine, only 23% were aware of the food crisis in Africa. I mention this because we have seen the most extraordinary outpouring of generous response to the Ukrainian people. In my diocese we have a whole system of welcoming and integrating families into homes and building up support groups in our parishes. Very many of those who come are traumatised; they need much more than just shelter and food. They need support, counselling and help. It has been a very traumatic time for them. We have seen the most incredible outpouring.
For this reason, we need to try to raise awareness of the potential famine in east Africa as public donations and acts of generosity may be a small additional way of responding to the immediate crisis. This is vital for us. The situation in Ukraine and in east Africa are key elements of self-reflection as we battle with our own cost of living crisis. Yes, many people in our own country are struggling but, despite this, the generosity of the British people remains extraordinarily buoyant and strong when we recognise how fortunate we are in real terms compared with most other parts of the world. We as a country have a duty to assist here—in Ukraine’s war effort, in helping end Russia’s blockade and in materially aiding east Africa during these challenging times.
I hope the Government can provide assurance that they will do everything in their power to contribute to the international effort in support of these aims.
While huge efforts have been made to take this precious cargo to Romania, Moldova and Poland, there are severe logistical limitations. The port of Odessa has always been and remains the exit port for food products from Ukraine. Historically, Ukraine has been the breadbasket of not only the old Soviet empire but much of Europe. The silos are now filled and only a small fraction can be substantially moved out of the country by road or rail. Shocking too is that the violence meted out to Ukrainians and the wanton destruction we witness each day have been aggravated by Russians taking wheat supplies for themselves.
This brings me to the substance of our debate. David Beasley, director of the UN World Food Programme, bluntly warned that
“50 million people in 45 countries are now just one step from famine.”
This is true nowhere more so than in east Africa and the Horn of Africa. As has so frequently been highlighted, climate change and often poor agricultural activity have been added to by four years in a row of failed rainy seasons and the after-effects of the Covid pandemic. There is real violence and instability, particularly in Ethiopia and Eritrea; in the latter case, all wheat imports are from Russia and Ukraine. In common with so many countries, price shocks are playing their part in social dislocation and instability. The IMF has made it clear that potential food price increases will disproportionately affect Africa.
But I return to Ukraine because, even before the current invasion, there was massive displacement of millions of people in Ukraine after the de facto occupation of the eastern part of the country. More latterly, millions of people fleeing the country are leaving behind a colossal bill to rebuild it, in due course. This is having a devastating impact on the livelihood of farmers, many of whom have been subject to violence and attack.
I also bring your Lordships’ attention to the situation in Egypt, which has seen an explosion of its population. Egyptians consume around 37% of their calories from wheat and 25% of their imports are from Ukraine. In 2010, food supplies and distribution problems undoubtedly provided a backdrop for extensive protest. There has been rioting in Iraq and there is real concern in Egypt that there could be violent social instability. Your Lordships know all too well that problems and protests in Egypt often spread elsewhere in the region. The Minister is well aware of this, so I know that many of your Lordships will be anxious to hear about any additional support, either singly or collectively, to the most vulnerable areas we are talking about.
We have been made very aware of migratory flows in recent years. In Europe, we are particularly conscious of this but, if you examine the statistics, they reveal a massive increase in migratory flows on the continent of Africa. For example, between 2015 and 2019 the number of migrants from Burundi living in Uganda increased by 69%, and migrants from Ethiopia living in Somalia increased by 42%. Many migrants in Djibouti and Rwanda have escaped from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The number of Eritreans who managed to get to Europe virtually doubled in the same period, but the food crisis, as a result of the savage and unprovoked attack on Ukraine by Russia, will undoubtedly hugely increase migratory flows, most particularly within Africa but inevitably to Europe as well.
I once again express my gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Alton. It is a terrible irony, as has already been expressed, that Stalin in effect starved millions of Ukrainians for not complying with his takeover of their lands—the Holodomor. It is a tragic irony that modern-day Russia may yet again cause the death of huge numbers of people who are totally removed from the conflict that the Russians have initiated, without the slightest justification.
As always, and as we have heard in so many other speeches, the noble Lord, Lord Alton, gave us a litany of statistics that have come in the endless briefs, which are incredibly helpful. There is no need to repeat them, but I want to press two other points. We are conscious that at the moment we are looking at a mass food distribution problem, not just because of the limitations of food available from Ukraine and Russia but simply because our world has become used to waste.
I decided to spend some time this morning checking what and how much we waste. A third of all food produced in the world is wasted, 55% of it by those of us in the North. The European Union, the United Kingdom and the United States account for some of the largest wasters on earth. By percentage levels, Belgium comes in just after the United States. That is ironic, as Belgium is the headquarters of many esteemed institutions that ought to be better resourced in how to deal with that waste. Some 3 trillion meals are wasted every single year. Were we to galvanise our efforts with the 1.3 billion tonnes of food wasted in the world, that would represent 10 meals per day for every starving child or adult to whom we have referred in this debate.
Why is this important for us? This has to become a moment of national effort. This morning we heard that the gas has been turned back on for Germany, but Germans are being encouraged to save gas to be ready for the autumn lack. It may get more difficult. It may become impossible to light their gas fires or even to power up their electricity supplies. Saving gas is a way of saving the country’s impending problem.
We need a national effort to save food. We need a European effort to save food. We need a G7 effort to save food. We need a G20 effort to save food. I am not aiming to be political in any way at all, but this is why we need alliances such as the European Union—so that we can save on the things we waste so easily and freely. If we do not save food and we continue to throw and trash it, 52.5% of all food in the United Kingdom will continue to be thrown away daily from restaurants, supermarkets and households. We are wasting while others are starving, and we need an effort driven from the centre and from the top—not just by NGOs but by the Government—to save and redistribute food. At the moment we have nothing at all from government on that issue.
We also need to consider how we think about loose resources, not necessarily gained by ill means but thrown around in a careless society where waste is so evident. Yesterday I noticed the EuroMillions lottery win of £195 million. That is $234 million, which represents $2 for 117 million people—that is the population of Ethiopia. One person will benefit with largesse and extreme gain, while millions will starve. I hear some saying, “But come on, you can’t take away the free-gotten gains of individuals”. How long will we watch millions starve, as Putin may wish, so that we become desperate in our alternative foreign policy options?
I note also—this may be uncomfortable for the Minister, but I hope not—that his current boss announced this morning that she could find £30 billion of tax cuts to be announced within the first week of her premiership, should she get there. It is worth noting, as Iain Duncan Smith did in campaigning for Liz Truss yesterday, that there is now tax headroom for substantial cuts. This year and last the United Kingdom cut our aid budget by £5 billion each time, meaning that when it comes to supporting the most vulnerable we are stripping ourselves of the ability to do so.
This should be a moment for stateswomanship or statesmanship at the helm of the Conservative Party, the Government and our nation. As we watch Ukraine drop down the headline list, and as we become more careless about what happens because we are more interested in how hot our homes are than in how desperate their lives are, we have to ask ourselves what kind of world we are creating in which we can watch such great waste, such careless abandon about public resources, such self-interest in public policy and such disregard for the destitute.