International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill

Baroness Williams of Crosby Excerpts

Friday 23rd January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Crosby (LD)]

My Lords, I echo the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock, in paying tribute to all three parties for what they have done about aid. In particular, I add one name: that of the noble Baroness, Lady Chalker, who I believe persuaded the Conservative Party to become a great champion of aid and changed a great many attitudes by the work she did. She deserves our tribute for that.

I will deal with just two issues, because obviously time is short. The first is the issue of partnership, which was raised by the noble Viscount, Lord Astor, and my noble friend Lady Falkner. One of the ways in which we can most effectively use the Bill is by recognising that there should be in middle-income countries a commitment of partnership towards what is sometimes called in churches, “the option for the poor”. I am thinking about a country such as India, which has now moved statistically into the middle-income group, but which, as many of us know, has huge inequalities and vast areas of poverty, as is also true of China. We need to mobilise, perhaps through the Commonwealth, the concept of joint responsibility; of more partnership between the countries that receive aid for their fellow citizens and those like us who contribute it.

I will give as an example one instance with which I happen to be associated, and which I declare as an interest: namely, the huge efforts being made for continuing and lasting assistance through economic development, for example in northern India. I have in mind a charity called Seva Mandir, which attracted very large sums of money from wealthy and middle-income Indian groups for the sustaining of the concept of rebuilding the old Rajasthan forest, including huge efforts to reforest and to involve children at school in looking after saplings that are handed out to them, which they then become responsible for—the tree almost becoming a kind of pet.

That means that whole communities become committed to rebuilding their own economies, and do so by involving children and young people—and not least, by the by, do so by exchanges of young people from this country and elsewhere, who work alongside their Indian colleagues for months at a time in that effort. The concept of using the growing knowledge of our own schoolchildren and university students in taking part in the physical rebuilding of many of the poorest communities is one which will help to give us a lasting international sense.

The second thing I will mention quickly was raised by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Williams of Oystermouth, which is the huge and growing challenge of anarchy in certain parts of the world. We need to recognise that bodies such as ISIL build upon a sense of hopelessness among young people. Again, the Commonwealth could do much more here to associate attempts to rebuild economies that are in desperate plight, and sometimes states that have broken down, by associating us together in a constructive—one might almost say a Marshall plan—approach in some of those desperate countries. South Sudan is one example; tragically, Nigeria is increasingly becoming another.

I have long felt that we do not use the resources we have in the Commonwealth to present good alternatives to some of the areas under the greatest pressure of all. That pressure reminds one, sadly, of the famous lines from the great Irish poet Mr Yeats, who said, as noble Lords may remember:

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity”.

The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Williams of Oystermouth, was absolutely right in saying that we need to work much more widely between departments —and I include in that the FCO, the Ministry of Defence and others—in offering constructive alternatives to the terrible spread of anarchy in our world, and that we should address that as part of our objective of building up the link between ourselves and these other countries.

Finally, it is very important that we recognise that countries which are themselves poor often have an amazing amount to contribute, and we do not recognise that contribution if we are too patriarchal and imperial in our approaches. Therefore, let us say, here and now, that we will use aid not only to credit ourselves for acts of generosity and imagination but to elicit from other countries, including poor countries, the huge contribution they themselves can make once there is a sense of hope for them to build on.