UK Development Partnership Assistance

Baroness Goudie Excerpts

Thursday 29th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goudie (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friends Lady Hyde and Lord Barber on their magnificent speeches on such an important subject which is close to all our hearts, especially at this time. I am extremely sad that my noble friend Lord Browne is leaving the House and retiring. We were friends before he came to Westminster, so it is a very sad day for me, and for all of us, that he is leaving, and I hope that we will always be in touch.

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, for bringing this debate before the House because it asks a simple but important question: what role does United Kingdom development partnership assistance play in how we are seen in the world? We have been promised over the last few months that we will be told what the new role is going to look like, but we have yet to see this on paper. It has been put off and off.

Britain has the ability to prevent conflict rather than respond to it after the damage is done. For many years, development assistance has been one of the United Kingdom’s great strengths. We were and should continue to be the leaders in this. It has rarely made headlines, but it has built trust, credibility and long-term relationships in places that diplomacy alone cannot reach. When we talk about soft power, we often think of culture, language or broadcasting. Look what has happened to our broadcasting. We are no longer a power through the World Service. We have cut back and cut back. We have cut the number of foreign correspondents in the BBC. There are hardly any foreign correspondents in the BBC, and there are going to be further cuts. There are also the cuts to the British Council. All these are part of Britain’s soft power.

For many communities around the world, Britain is known through a clinic that has stayed open, a girls’ school that has continued through conflict, or a peace process that has held. That is soft power in the best and most practical form. Development partnerships work because they are not transactional. They are built over time, grounded in shared effort and local leadership. They allow the United Kingdom to listen as well as to speak, and to be present long after the cameras have moved on, which we know matters for conflict prevention.

Conflict does not emerge in a vacuum. It grows where institutions collapse, where inequality deepens, where young people see no future and where women are excluded from decision-making. Development assistance addresses those conditions directly. It supports education, livelihoods, health systems and inclusive government, which are the foundation that makes peace sustainable. When they are in place, a country’s GDP and exports strengthen and women are healthy and part of its leadership.

As many have said today, we are going backwards at the moment. No women are seen at any peace table. I have been assured by Ministers here that local women are there, but we have not seen them. We have not seen any notes. It is absolutely vital that we agree and sign up to having many women—local women—at the peace table. None of that has been seen in the last two years. We know of the women leaders in Ukraine: they have come here and been to America. They have sat outside the door. They should be there, as the women in Sudan were there and the women in Northern Ireland were insistent that they were there. We accepted that, but we have gone backwards on this issue.

There is good evidence that peacebuilding and prevention are cost effective. By one estimate, each £1 invested in conflict prevention today saves £16 in costs that would occur due to war, insecurity and humanitarian crises down the line. Modest investments in mediation, reconciliation and community-level peacebuilding can prevent conflicts that would otherwise cost lives and require greater humanitarian or military spending later.

UK-supported peace processes in places such as Colombia and the Philippines show that sustained engagement can be achieved. The Commons IDC warned that slashing aid undermines our conflict-prevention capacity and thus our national security—it is a two-way process. UK aid has supported women’s participation in the peace process, protection from sexual violence, access to education and economic independence. There are countless positive stories, from the eradication of Ebola in west Africa—the UK made a large contribution to this—to the millions of girls in South Africa who gained schooling through the DfID programme. These are not marginal issues. We know that, when women are meaningfully involved in peacebuilding, peace lasts longer and communities recover more quickly.