International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill

Debate between Baroness Northover and Lord Tugendhat

Friday 27th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

I am very happy to share these figures with noble Lords but I am making a comparison with the aid budget, which is what we are addressing—perhaps I could bring noble Lords back to that. I do not dispute the value of the defence budget but we are trying to make sure that the aid budget is much more predictable. I hope that I may be allowed to carry on because I realise that noble Lords wish to get through some other elements.

[Lord Tugendhat]

I thank the noble Baroness. She has just asserted that there has been considerable continuity as regards defence expenditure. I recognise that the noble Lord opposite disputed that but she has asserted that there has been considerable continuity in that regard. That continuity has been achieved without a legal obligation, so does not that cast doubt on the whole essence of her argument that a legal obligation is necessary to achieve continuity?

[Baroness Northover]

That is an interesting point. The problem with the aid budget is that you do not see the level of continuity and predictability that you see in other government departments, so, in some ways, the noble Lord has put his finger on why we have this Bill.

Several noble Lords have linked aid and defence. Of course, we recognise that conflict is development in reverse, with no fragile low-income country meeting a single millennium development goal. Helping rebuild fragile states will help tackle the root causes of global problems such as disease, drugs, migration and terrorism, and is far less costly than military interventions. The United Kingdom is, and has long been, a global leader in promoting a “whole of government” approach to international peace and security. The establishment of a new, more than £1 billion Conflict, Stability and Security Fund in 2015-16 will support a larger and more integrated UK effort in National Security Council priority countries.

The noble Lord, Lord Reid, rightly pointed to the outstanding contribution that the military has provided in supporting civilian efforts to combat Ebola in Sierra Leone. I welcome, as we all do, that close working and am sure that we will need to develop it further in the future. Some ODA is, of course, spent by the MoD as well as by the FCO, DECC, Defra, DoH and the Department for Education. I come back to my main point: we are trying to ensure that aid is predictable. It should not be tied to the entirely laudable aim of ensuring that defence or other areas are properly addressed. That is why we cannot support this amendment and I hope that the noble Lord will be willing to withdraw it.

International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill

Debate between Baroness Northover and Lord Tugendhat

Friday 23rd January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

I have in my notes an answer to the noble Lord, which was slightly lower down in what I was seeking to address. He said that he was mystified as to why we were dealing with this now. What occurred to me was that I was somewhat mystified that the previous Government had not legislated for this, despite their commitment. What we should welcome—and that is true across this House—is that we have finally ensured that we have met that 0.7% commitment, and that we are now seeking to legislate. That is the important thing and I welcome the cross-party support for it.

The House of Commons has passed the Bill overwhelmingly and handed it to us. It is now our responsibility to help ensure that my noble friend Lord Purvis is able to carry this through and into law. We have heard outstanding and compelling speeches and even those who feel that this is not the right move—

[Lord Tugendhat]

I take the Minister’s point about the responsibility to carry it forward into law, if that is what the majority want. However, I hope she will agree that this is an amending and revising House, and that there is a duty to seek to amend and improve Bills, regardless of where they are. I think back to the debate we had some months ago on the referendum Bill where many noble Lords opposite, whom I supported, argued that just because such a Bill had a majority in the Commons that was no reason not to try to improve it in the Lords. The same applies on this occasion.

[Baroness Northover]

I will be coming on to that in a while. Perhaps the noble Lord will be satisfied to wait a little for that.

As I have said, we have heard outstanding and compelling speeches which have recognised that aid is transformational. It is also interesting to note that even those who do not feel that this is the right move are committed in terms of aid, which of course is important. The noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, is an economist and not one to misuse statistics, but he expressed more than 90% agreement to what we are doing in terms of aid. I for one will bank that. I knew that we would have a powerful debate on this Bill, that noble Lords would speak from huge experience, and that we would take a far-reaching international perspective.

We know only too well that no man is an island—I might feminise that. As my noble friend Lord Purvis made clear, the first point to make is the moral case, and many noble Lords have made that case. Indeed, it was made with particular power by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby and—not least through his presence here—the former Archbishop of Canterbury the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Williams of Oystermouth. I welcome his engagement, and we are pleased to see them involved today. My noble friend Lord Steel quoted strong passages from two global religions as to why we must do this. We heard my noble friend Lord Chidgey’s moving account from Juba, as well as those from the noble Lord, Lord Judd, and others. They all made the moral case exceptionally clear.

As noble Lords also laid out, we recognise our interests and how we are all interlinked. We can see that a weak health system in Sierra Leone, seemingly a distant place, results in an epidemic taking hold on an unprecedented scale. Even in Britain we have felt the effects of that. International development is not an optional extra or an afterthought; it is vital. Investing now to help the poorest can and will prevent some of the terrible situations we see today from happening tomorrow and affecting us. I was especially struck by the powerful speech of the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, about what might have happened had this measure been implemented 40 or 45 years ago. The noble Baroness, Lady Royall, quoted Nelson Mandela saying that:

“Poverty is not an accident”,

while my noble friend Lady Manzoor talked about tackling poverty.

The 2004 report of the UN High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, of which our colleague the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, was a leading member, noted the interconnectedness of our world. That was a very important conclusion for the panel to come to. I shall quote from the report:

“Development and security are inextricably linked. A more secure world is only possible if poor countries are given a real chance to develop. Extreme poverty and infectious diseases threaten many people directly, but they also provide a fertile breeding-ground for other threats, including civil conflict. Even people in rich countries will be more secure if their Governments help poor countries to defeat poverty and disease by meeting the Millennium Development Goals”.

Quite so, and that underpins the powerful speech of my noble friend Lady Falkner about what other countries should be doing. It is excellent that at least we are taking the lead in this.

One of the most important principles of effective development is to ensure continuity. It is no use moving into a development programme one year and abandoning it the next. Continuity and certainty of programmes over a number of years are essential to securing good development outcomes. That is why we have committed to budgets over four years and why a Bill such as this, which commits us to spending 0.7% of our national income, is so important. There is otherwise the risk that the international development budget will fluctuate and fail to provide our partners with certainty when they need to make critical investments in health and education. I can recall, as no doubt can other noble Lords, when Ireland was delighted to make the commitment that it would reach an aid budget of 0.7% by 2007. I remember that that happened after an internal struggle. I also recall, with great disappointment, how quickly it moved away from that—and it is not yet achieved. Neither, prior to 2013, did we in the United Kingdom achieve it.

There is voter pressure in the United Kingdom for other budgets; for example, for the Department of Health, the Department for Education, and the DWP. Their budgets are very large, as my noble friend Lady Barker pointed out, and they are, largely, predictable. That has never been the case for overseas aid. The pressures are very clear as regards that budget, yet we seek to support similar projects: for example, getting girls into and through schools, and establishing and maintaining clinics, as the noble Baroness, Lady Tonge, rightly demanded of us.

I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, recognises that need for predictability. I am sure that he supports our long-term financial commitment to the EU—would it not be easy to push that budget back and forth?—yet we grant to the EU according to our legal obligation, and we are right to do so. The EU can then plan and budget. This is no different. The conflict across borders—

[Lord Tugendhat]

It is totally different. The problem that I—and I think other members of the committee—have is that while we are fully supportive of aid and made that quite clear, we also made it clear that we are worried, as are others, about the way in which money is spent. We are dealing with multiyear programmes. With such programmes, you will run into a lot of trouble if you have to spend on what is called—since the noble Baroness invokes Europe—the douzième provisoire: that is, if you have to spend one-12th on an annual basis instead of spreading it over the commitment. In the case of the EU, there is a formula by which the member states are assessed, and we pay according to that formula. However, it is not linked to projects. The problem here is that you have a multiyear project and you are saying that a given amount has to be spent each year. The Minister may or may not agree with me, but she is invoking a false parallel.

[Baroness Northover]

Having been a Minister in the Department for International Development, I know that there is obviously flexibility in the department, because humanitarian conflicts will arise, which you have to put money into, while you also sustain support for various other projects. The noble Lord might read the NAO report; one of the things that struck me when I read it was that every department in government has to budget, and they know more or less what their budgets will be. There may be contingencies, and they may have a contingency fund, but they have to plan. It is not just left to what they may decide to do after six months or so.

The situation is no different in DfID. I assure the noble Lord that if he reads the NAO report very carefully he will see that it concludes that business was properly stress-tested and assessed. I think I should proceed, because I am now on 14 minutes, and I will come on to some of these other points. I will also be happy to meet the noble Lord after this debate, if that would help, so that we can explore some of those issues.

Noble Lords will be fully aware of the kind of projects that DfID is involved in; during this debate noble Lords have very helpfully outlined a number of these areas. A number of noble Lords emphasised in particular our support for women and girls and how right this is, including my noble friends Lady Hodgson, Lady Jenkin, Lady Manzoor, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Kinnock and Lady Flather. We fully recognise the importance of supporting women and girls and thank noble Lords for supporting us in doing that. In addition, as part of that, the emphasis on maternal health and family planning was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Watson, as well as by the noble Baronesses, Lady Tonge and Lady Flather.

Mention was made of women giving birth on a concrete slab. Today is my eldest son’s birthday. This morning I found myself thinking that, had I given birth in a developing country, he would have died and so would I. Noble Lords who think about it will probably recognise that either they or their close family might very well have been in that situation. As has been said, poverty is not an accident. It is not something that certain groups need to suffer from or should suffer from.

Noble Lords have made mention of our commitment of 0.7%, and some have suggested that the increase has not improved the quality of that spend. I assure them that the Development Assistance Committee of the OECD concluded recently in its formal peer review of DfID on the effectiveness of the way in which we have scaled up our spending in recent years, planning carefully to meet the target—and I have seen that this is very much the case—while at the same time increasing the quality of our spend. As noble Lords were speaking, I found myself thinking about the commitment that we have been able to make, for example, on so-called neglected tropical diseases. We hope that they are no longer neglected, so we can combat blindness, which is totally avoidable—something that we were able to do because of the increase in the budget.

In response to the noble Baroness, Lady Tonge, of course there are many lessons to learn from Sierra Leone. This was an unprecedented crisis. We have done a huge amount, as was noted during the debate, to ensure that it did not become a pandemic. She will know the details of our support there.

India: Aid

Debate between Baroness Northover and Lord Tugendhat

Wednesday 15th May 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

The noble Baroness needs to bear it in mind that it is through economic development that you lift people out of poverty and that India has lifted 60 million people out of poverty. The changes in the UK’s aid arrangements reflect India’s rapid growth and development process. We will continue to be involved with it in how this is taken forward.

[Lord Tugendhat]

Does the noble Baroness not agree that as India is one of the most rapidly growing economies in the world, with a very substantial space programme, a foreign aid programme of its own and an ambitious defence programme, the responsibility for dealing with its very considerable social problems rests with the Government of India? The purpose of British aid should be not only to help very poor people but to help very poor people in poor countries that do not have the means at their disposal which the Indian Government have. The Indian Government choose to spend money on space, foreign aid and defence, and that is their right, but it is not the responsibility of Britain to fill the gaps.

[Baroness Northover]

The two noble Lords may want to have a conversation in the margins of the Chamber. I would point out that the Government of India have been putting an increasing amount of money into education, higher education, access to finance, comprehensive village development, and so on. There is a range of areas where India is taking forward the kind of programmes that both noble Lords would wish to see.

DfID: Tied Aid

Debate between Baroness Northover and Lord Tugendhat

Monday 11th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

I appreciate what the noble Lord has to say, and I hope that he continues to say such things loud and clear, because in a time of austerity there is a clamour of voices asking whether this is the right thing to do. As we meet the 0.7% commitment, which we have built to and kept to, we have a moral obligation to address the difference in the levels of need around the world. There is also the interest in terms of greater stability. If you are addressing the most abject poverty around the world, that helps to stabilise things for everybody, whether in that region or in our own.

[Lord Tugendhat]

Does the Minister agree that Africa is now one of the fastest growing regions in the world and that we should all be very pleased about that? Aid is now a relatively small proportion of the disbursements that go from the developed world to what used to be called the developing world. Remittances and direct investment have grown enormously, and the role of aid is far less significant than it used to be. It is not a question of this Government cutting back on what they have been giving; the extraordinary thing about this Government is that, at a time when they are cutting back on almost everything else, they have been increasing the overseas aid budget by 30%. I find that barely explicable.