Tony Baldry (Banbury): The hon. Member for Edinburgh, North and Leith (Mr. Lazarowicz) has done us all a service in introducing this debate so well and so succinctly. It is good to see the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, the hon. Member for Harlow (Mr. Rammell) here. I appreciate that the Secretary of State and the Under-Secretary from the Department for International Development are doubtless overseas on Government business, but I am glad to be able to thank the Minister, on behalf of the International Development Committee, for the incredible help that ambassadors and high commissioners give us in our work around the world. They are unfailing in their courtesy, support and good humour, notwithstanding the various demands that we place upon them. Foreign Office Ministers do not often take part in these debates.

I hope that I shall not repeat anything that has been said. The US Government have announced a $15 billion dollar programme over the next five years to combat HIV/AIDS. It is a go-it-alone fund, which will work on its own terms and only through US aid agencies. It will ignore existing structures, relationships and action plans already in place in those countries, especially Africa, already affected most by the HIV/AIDS pandemic. As the Financial Times recently observed,

"As a recent convert to the war on Aids, the US administration has latched on to a simplistic vision of what to do, based on the example of a single country - Uganda. It knows little of the measures in place in different parts of the world and has not recognised that each country needs to shape the best local response. It is here that the Global Fund plays an important role."

I would go further. The issue is not just the global health fund, but the European countries' response to the United States' proposals. Although the US effort is a bold part, it is only a part of the total financing needs. Its limits are implicit in the fact that it is directed only at HIV/AIDS. It does not deal with malaria or tuberculosis and the American fund will be operational in only 14 countries.

The global fund will require new donor support of about $7 billion this year and next - roughly $3.5 billion a year - to meet the needs of the high-quality proposals that it is considering. A reasonable financing framework is thus clear and I believe that Europe collectively should match the US initiative with our own $3 billion a year contribution, while Japan and other donors should contribute at least $1 billion a year in addition. That would make a total of at least $7 billion a year during 2003 and 2004. Half of that should be devoted to the global fund and the other half should be spent on programmes that would indirectly bolster, rather than undermine, the fund.

As the same article in the Financial Times noted,

"Silence from Europe at this moment would be deadly for the Global Fund. If the US is the only country to put up large new sums for the war against Aids, then it will be a US programme. On the other hand, with a bold European response to Mr. Bush's daring initiative, the transatlantic alliance - under great strain over Iraq - would prove to the world that it continues its historic commitments to freedom and human betterment. Impoverished and dying people around the world await a clarion call from the US and Europe together."

International partnership to combat an international problem is imperative, but what has been the UK Government's response? I appreciate that this is not the Minister's brief and I hope that he will prevail on the Under-Secretary of State for International Development to respond to any questions raised in the debate that he feels are worthy of a more detailed response.

I do not doubt the commitment of the Treasury and the Department for International Development to fight HIV/AIDS, but a recent interview given by the Chancellor is telling. He has, rightly, said that there needs to be far faster progress on trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights - TRIPS - at the current World Trade Organisation negotiations at Doha, which means Governments, such as the US Government, doing much more to make drug companies, such as GlaxoSmithKline, allow their drugs to be patented. Disappointment about the fact that a recent vaccine for AIDS has failed is well understood, but the Chancellor also alluded to the Government's new idea of an international financing facility.

Dr. Tonge: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would hate to give the impression that the vaccine initiative had totally failed. Only one vaccine was being developed for the western strain of the virus and many other trials are taking place in the world.

Tony Baldry: I was simply pointing out that there must be disappointment about the fact that the present vaccine trial has failed.

The problem with the international financing facility is that it does not have the support of the United States. It does not necessarily have the support of UK non-governmental organisations, because it does not make clear where the UK will stand on overseas development investment after 2015, nor what will happen to the UK's commitment to reaching a target of 0.7 per cent. of gross national income for overseas development investment.

In sub-Saharan Africa, 30 million people are victims of HIV/AIDS and as many as one in four people in countries like Zambia have AIDS, so Africa will not necessarily meet the United Nation's 2015 goals even with the international financing facility. Africa is the only continent going backwards as we speak and although the world is ravaged by the HIV/AIDS pandemic, Africa is at its epicentre. The World Food Programme estimates that 14 million people face serious food shortages in southern Africa this year, with the same number in Ethiopia and the horn of Africa, partly because hunger begets AIDS as AIDS begets hunger.

What is needed is not an international financing facility for HIV/AIDS but a straightforward commitment to the facilities and mechanisms that already exist. We do not need to invent or create new financing mechanisms; we need to support those mechanisms that already exist, such as the global health fund. I recognise that that fund has its problems, but I suspect that those problems are not caused by the structures that it offers but are a result of the financial commitments that it receives from us and from our partners in the European Union.

I hope that I can prevail upon the patience of the House by sharing a letter that I recently wrote to The Independent, in which I stated:

"Sir: Prior to the International Aids Conference ... the devastating report from UNAids demonstrated the urgent need for renewed policies on HIV/Aids in both the developed and developing worlds to combat the pandemic in poorer countries.

"On the part of richer countries to prevent HIV/Aids, it is clear that the Global Health Fund simply isn't working. Whilst such trust funds act as a good mechanism to raise the profile of a specific issue it is less good when the issue's profile is high but only a lowly third of money pledged is actually reaching the Fund. Money surely would be better invested direct to African countries' administrations and local NGOs. On treatment also there is a need for further commitment from countries like the US, Canada and Japan at the forthcoming Doha trade round to ensure that poorer countries are given the capability to copy patented HIV/Aids drugs produced in other better equipped countries.

"Nonetheless, on the part of some poorer countries themselves, if more aid is to go to their governments, then still more needs to be done to recognise the extent of the pandemic. No doubt the recent South African court case was a massive move forward but ambiguities still exist in their approach and until these are removed treatment and prevention will stagnate.

"The reward would not only be preventing the HIV/Aids crisis escalating ever more; recent estimates also suggest that the economic boom for everyone would be US$186bn each year. I suspect this would benefit African countries more than the recent G8 summit."

I hope that the Government will give the global health fund every possible support. More importantly, however, I hope that they will encourage our European Union partners to match what the Americans are putting into the fund to ensure that it has the requisite funds necessary for it to do over the next two to three years what it was set up to achieve.