Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Andrew Mitchell and Richard Burden

Wednesday 23rd May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

I can give my hon. Friend that assurance. I would be very interested to see the material he describes. I can tell him that numerous credible studies show no evidence of incitement or anti-Semitism in Palestinian Authority textbooks, so if he ensures that we get a copy of what he has seen, we will take the appropriate action.

[Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)]

Has the International Development Secretary joined the Foreign Secretary and, curiously, the Education Secretary in meeting Israeli Foreign Minister Lieberman during his visit to the UK? Irrespective of whether he meets him, will the right hon. Gentleman transmit to the Israeli Foreign Minister the concerns of the United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Deputy Emergency Relief Co-ordinator, who visited the west bank last week and said:

“I am extremely concerned about the humanitarian impact of demolitions and displacement on Palestinian families. Such actions cause great human suffering, run counter to international law and must be brought to a halt”?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Andrew Mitchell and Richard Burden

Wednesday 14th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

I have looked very carefully into this issue, not least because I know of my hon. Friend’s interest in it, and I have found no evidence in Palestinian school textbooks of what he describes. I was in Gaza just before Christmas, and I raised the specific matter then. I am sure my hon. Friend will share my pleasure in the fact that the State Department in America has set up an inquiry to examine the quality of both Israeli and Palestinian textbooks and will be reporting later this year, probably in the autumn. He and I will, no doubt, look with great interest at what the report has to say.

[Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)]

I was in Gaza at the weekend, as it witnessed the biggest escalation in Israeli air strikes and Palestinian rockets for three years. Although we all hope that the current truce holds, does the Secretary of State agree that the ongoing and daily madness of Israel’s blockade is illustrated by the fact that it incentivises a few to make millions from a tunnel economy and benefits armed groups, while legitimate Palestinian businesses cannot export, the UN cannot get the materials it needs to rebuild shattered schools and hospitals, and the poor are forced to rely on food handouts?

[Mr Mitchell]

The hon. Gentleman makes a reasonable point about the effects of this action in terms of the Palestinian economy, but he will know that the Government’s position is clear: we urge both sides to desist from the actions he has described.

Future of CDC

Debate between Andrew Mitchell and Richard Burden

Thursday 14th July 2011 Westminster Hall

[The Secretary of State for International Development (Mr Andrew Mitchell)]

It is a pleasure to appear under your benign chairmanship, Mr Walker, for the first time. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce), who launched this debate today, and his Committee on its work not only on CDC, which has been enormously helpful to my Department, but on a range of other matters to which it brought extraordinary expertise and experience as well as energy, when considering difficult and intractable development problems. Secretaries of State do not always agree with Committees on every issue, and that is true of the International Development Committee and this Secretary of State. However, for the record, it is a pleasure to work with such an expert Committee. The Department and its Ministers draw huge strength from the way in which the Committee goes about its business, and I am extremely grateful to all its members for that.

This has been an excellent debate on many of the key issues that the Government are trying to address in connection with CDC. Let me start by emphasising the point that several hon. Members made—that CDC, given the terms of reference under which it has operated in recent years, has done an extremely good job. It has provided an excellent return to taxpayers, and it has increased substantially the funds under management, but my submission is that in development terms it is a greatly under-utilised asset, and needs to be changed.

It is fair to say that some years ago, CDC perhaps had too much development DNA in its work, and not enough financial rigour. Indeed—I hope that this does not cause Labour Members to blush—the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, was minded to privatise CDC, but that did not proceed. The pendulum has now swung to the other extent, and it is a very strong, financially driven organisation that is not much different from many other organisations that operate in emerging markets. It seems to have lost some of its development DNA, and we need to put that back in the centre so that it has both rigorous financial control DNA, as well as strong development DNA. That is our intention, and I am pleased that it was strongly endorsed by the Committee in its response to our proposals.

It is worth emphasising the point that was made by the Committee’s Chair, my right hon. Friend the Member for Gordon, that aid is a means to an end, not an end in itself. The coalition Government have been determined to refocus the development programme so that the aid programme is fuelled by the engine of development—the private sector. Here, I turn to some of the comments made by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden), who is my hon. Friend in Birmingham, where our constituencies are close together. He asked about the 50% figure for the amount that will be spent through private sector development in India, and for which other countries we were minded to adopt that policy. He also asked me to explain why I saw the private sector as a key means of development, and we had some exchanges on that when I appeared before the Select Committee.

I suspect that, although the hon. Gentleman sees intellectually that the private sector is the engine of development, he may have residual reservations, and sometimes under the bedclothes late at night he may think that it is perhaps the enemy of development rather than its engine. The truth is that if one believes that the private sector is the engine of development, one wants to bring to bear all the available skills in the private sector to try to drive development forward. Some 90% of the world’s jobs are created not by Governments but by the private sector. Wealth creation and economic growth empower societies and enable them to lift their citizens out of poverty.

[Richard Burden]

I do not know what the bedclothes are like in the north of Birmingham, but the Secretary of State is searching under the wrong bedclothes in the south of Birmingham because that was not the question I asked. I wanted him to explain the figure of 50%, as opposed to 40%, 60% or 80%. If there is a logic to that figure, what is it based on? Does it apply elsewhere, and if so, on what is that based?

[Mr Mitchell]

As I made clear to the Committee, the figure of 50% feels right in the context of India. I suspect that in many bilateral programmes over the years, there will be an increasing role for the work of the private sector as countries move down the path of lifting themselves out of poverty. In Vietnam, for example, we can see how that engine has driven the alleviation of poverty. There is no science to the figure of 50%, but it feels right in the case of India. As I said when I gave evidence to the Committee, it is not an arbitrary target but an aim.

As the hon. Gentleman will be aware, in defending our decision to continue with an aid and development programme in India, it is important to respond to public concern. We must explain that, yes, India is roaring out of poverty, but there are more poor people in India than in the whole of sub-Saharan Africa. Seven and a half times the total population of the United Kingdom live on less than 80p a day, and it is right to walk the last mile with India on development. The aid and development programme is important, and makes up part of the rich tapestry of Britain’s relations with India that were so singularly reinvigorated by the Prime Minister’s visit last year. Those relations are important and we all—not only people in India but those in Britain as well—have a huge amount to gain from Indian prosperity. For that reason, we decided to freeze the programme, focus on work in the poorest states and redirect a significant part of the budget—up to approximately 50% by the end of the next four years—to pro-poor private sector development. That will create the jobs and prosperity that are essential for India.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Andrew Mitchell and Richard Burden

Wednesday 13th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

My hon. Friend has made a good point. I believe that I met the vicar during a visit at the time of the general election, but I, or one of my fellow Ministers, would be happy to meet him and some of my hon. Friend’s constituents to discuss this important matter.

[Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State did not say in his opening remarks that Britain is winding down its aid programme in Burundi, a country in which more than 80% of the population live on less than $1.25 a day. What specific assurances can he give that other donors will take up the programmes in which Britain has been involved in so far?

[Mr Mitchell]

The hon. Gentleman will be aware that Germany, Belgium and France have much larger bilateral programmes in Burundi than Britain. We are providing only 3.6% of the funding through our bilateral programme, but we have to make tough decisions about how we spend our budget. It is, after all, hard-earned taxpayers’ money, and we do not think it provides good value for money to have such a small programme with such high administrative expenses. I can tell the hon. Gentleman, however, that through multilateral support over the next few years Britain will spend about double the sum of the old bilateral programme.

Aid Reviews

Debate between Andrew Mitchell and Richard Burden

Tuesday 1st March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

We have looked carefully at EU aid spending and while it is true that the spending through the Commission is not as good as it should be, it is nevertheless also true that the European development fund spends British taxpayers’ money quite well. Let me also make it clear to my hon. Friend that although some 17% of the funding comes from Britain, 40% of it is spent on the Commonwealth countries for which I know he has a particular affection.

[Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State suggests terminating the aid programme in Vietnam. I suggest that he look again at the report of the Select Committee after its visit to the country in 2007. It recognised that although the aid relationship needed to change, the graduation of Vietnam to middle-income status was fragile, that many good ideas that could be used elsewhere in the world were being tested, and that the aid relationship, although changing, should continue. Will the right hon. Gentleman look at that again?