International Development Strategy

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 16th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, for securing this debate. I start from the point made by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans: that no one is safe until everyone is safe, as has been so acutely brought home by Covid. To be more specific, current science suggests that the omicron variant probably arose in someone who was immunocompromised and untreated for HIV. That demonstrates how the world’s healthcare systems are crucial to the health of us all.

Even more broadly, no one is secure—we cannot be secure—until everyone in the world is. Our failed foreign policies, our role as one of the chief arms peddlers in the world and our refusal to accept the rightful desire of self-determination from peoples around the world has put the world, and us, in the position it is in today. I particularly commend the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Sikka. We have to stop being the world’s chief enabler of corruption. This is a neocolonial continuation of the colonial exploitation that made so much of the world so poor.

I will address the comment of the noble Lord, Lord Desai, suggesting that it is not up to us to cure poverty. First of all, it is up to us to stop causing poverty through the actions of our institutions and our companies. It is surely up to us to repair some of the damage we have done and continue to do, both through overseas development assistance and through reparations. It is obvious that the need for the strategy we are all anxiously awaiting and previewing today is more acute in these times of straitened ODA budgets. It is estimated that this year, we are down to about £11 billion, from nearly £15 billion the year before.

Like other noble Lords, I am sure, I received a number of briefings from major institutions in the UK making entirely well-founded special pleadings. The noble Lords, Lord McConnell and Lord Oates, referred to the Mines Advisory Group and the fact that there has been a 75% cut in funding in that area, which is unconscionable. The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists—picking up on points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, on the slashing of funding for sexual and reproductive health—says that at least 5% of the budget should go to mother and baby health. Save the Children points out that our bilateral aid to Africa is at a 15-year low in real terms, and likely to fall below that of most of the G7. It asks —I would be interested in the Minister’s comments on this—that poverty reduction be the chief aim of the strategy. Sightsavers makes a really important point about the need for disability-inclusive development.

In introducing all this, the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, said that it was not about the budget but about how we use it. I am afraid this must be about the budget, because we cannot meet even our most urgent, crucial priorities in the current framework. I believe the Minister would love to go back to the department and say, “More money for ODA”, but I realise the barrier he faces. I have a different proposal for him to take back that is not just about more money. It does not come from me but from more than 50 Nobel laureates, who this week signed an open letter calling for a “peace dividend” campaign—for all countries to cut their military spending by just 2% a year for the next five years and put half the money into a UN fund to combat pandemics, the climate crisis and extreme poverty. To name a couple of the UK signatories, there is Sir Roger Penrose—UK mathematician, philosopher of science and physics laureate—and the biologist and Cambridge University professor Sir Venki Ramakrishnan. The Dalai Lama is also a signatory.

The proposers say that this fund could amount to $1 trillion by 2030. To look at the numbers in this, UK defence spending is currently about £50 billion—given that figure, the NHS, which gets about £200 billion, is remarkably good value for money. Taking 2% from UK defence spending—£1 billion a year—would not be utterly transformative but it would go a long way, particularly in the priority areas that NGOs have been making such powerful representations to us about. It would mean a 10% increase in the budget. Green Party policy, I must say, is to have 1% of GDP—about £20 billion—for the official development assistance budget, which would meet most of the most urgent priorities.

I finish by stressing that all this is a relative drop in the ocean compared to the damage we continue to do every day. We must really look at our place in the world; we often hear that the Government wish to be world leading. Here is a very practical example, which I hope the Minister will at least take back and ask for a discussion about, of how we could be truly world leading in stepping up to the peace dividend. Perhaps this is outside the Minister’s hands, but every government Minister could ask themselves over this festive season what they could do to make the world a better place and make everybody in the UK securer and safer in 2022.