Queen’s Speech

Earl of Sandwich Excerpts

Thursday 17th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Sandwich]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lichfield and to support everything he has just said—although I think we were all horrified to hear about the absconding bishop and we pray that it may not happen again.

The level of the aid budget may not seem as compelling as some issues of foreign policy but it affects millions of people’s lives as well as our own. It is in the coalition agreement and all parties are signed up to it. “We will legislate when parliamentary time allows”, say Ministers. Where have we heard this before? The Bill to enshrine the United Nations 0.7% target in law is a bit further down the list than Lords reform but it is one that already commands consensus and will need very little parliamentary time. Indeed, if the Bill is already being drafted, as I hear, it would be a good candidate for pre-legislative scrutiny. Can the Minister say when he thinks it may come forward?

We know from the Secretary of State’s interview last month that he is personally behind the Bill and that his party will support him, judging by a show of hands in the 1922 Committee. Politicians of all hues know that there is massive public support for the aid target, and aid agencies are pressing for the Bill. Thanks to Ministers like our own noble Baroness, Lady Chalker, who was here earlier, poverty eradication is now firmly Conservative philosophy these days and one of the keystones of the coalition. I was pleased to hear the noble Lord, Lord Howell, mention Africa and my noble friend Lord Cameron explaining what actually works in Africa, and we need to hear more about that. Plenty of things work.

However, as we have heard, there are critics of the legislative route, including some close to home. The Economic Affairs Committee’s report does not accept that meeting the UN target by 2013 should be a plank of aid policy and gives four reasons: it prioritises the amount rather than the results of aid; it makes spending more important than effectiveness; speed reduces quality, value for money and accountability; and there is an increased risk of a corrosive effect on local political systems. The report claims that it deprives future Governments of the flexibility to respond to changing circumstances. I do not agree with these points, which are rather academic, and I will be happy to respond on them when we have a full debate on the report. I suspect that the then Minister will dispose of them fairly quickly, saying that legislation will in no way alter the quality of aid or impact on other Governments and that it gives the givers and receivers of aid more stability and confidence in the aid process.

Meanwhile, the Lords report has been ferociously attacked by the Bond group, which represents all the leading aid agencies. It argues that aid is already making a difference, saving millions of lives and ensuring growth and good governance. It says that we need targets such as the millennium development goals to halve poverty and reduce infant mortality by at least one-third. These and some other targets have already been met, thanks partly to an international campaign but mainly because of the efforts of certain Governments and of the poor themselves.

The 0.7% target was set by the UN more than 40 years ago. Although progress has been slow, Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden have now reached it. The UK stands high in the esteem of other countries and was commended by the OECD only two years ago for an outstanding aid programme. It will certainly be expected to be one of the next countries to attain the 0.7% target. I was especially impressed by Christian Aid’s recent comment that Britain had the largest share of aid through the Marshall Plan after the war and that we now had the opportunity to “pay it forward” to others, finding a new role as a “development superpower”, as the Minister put it earlier.

Finally, the aid agencies remind us that world recession has hit the poorest in all countries hardest through rising food and energy prices. In countries suffering from conflict, the internally displaced can expect no future without the assistance of the international community. In South Sudan, we are hovering on the edge of another humanitarian disaster, as we heard earlier. In Kosovo, we have helped another new nation emerge beyond those disasters. We have high hopes for Afghanistan. I spoke to a delegation of Members of Parliament from Afghanistan yesterday, who gave me much confidence about what we are achieving there. In other words, we already have a moral duty, as we have heard from the right reverend Prelate, to maintain our aid programme and this should be turned into a legal requirement. It is also in our own self-interest that we keep up our international obligations, many of which also bring us greater security as well as political, diplomatic and trading advantages. We heard some of these arguments from the Labour Front Bench, too.

At the same time, we need to reconsider our aid targets such as the MDGs, which are coming to the end of their time. The Prime Minister is due to co-chair the post-2015 review, which will build on their successes and look forward to a new set of sustainable development goals.

The advocates of these SDGs, as they will be called, will have to tread carefully if they are not to founder, as Rio is foundering, on one basic paradox: developed countries are trying to reduce world consumption and carbon emissions while developing countries, led by middle-income countries, are going for growth and trying to increase them. The climate change agenda is getting bogged down in this paradox, and it would be better for the world if we stuck to people-based poverty reduction as our primary development goal. Churches and aid agencies have focused correctly for years on integrated development and the relationships, as we heard from my noble friend Lord Cameron, between soil and water, between nutrition and healthcare, between small farmers—most of them women—and entrepreneurs, following attainable projects. Good governance and human rights are also important. I know that DfID is very good at these, but in every programme we must look first at the participation of the people, because they will ensure their own success.