Lord Bates
Main Page: Lord Bates (Conservative - Life peer)
Lord Bates (Con)
My Lords, I join others in congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, on securing this debate and the way in which she introduced it. Following the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, I was struck again by the strong cross-party consensus that always used to exist in this House on this important issue. That enabled us to project that collective power around the world. I hope we can return to that at some point. I also look forward to hearing the maiden speeches, particularly of the noble Lord, Lord Barber. When I was Minister for International Development, we knew of the work he did in Pakistan in advancing education among young girls. It was a ground-breaking piece of work, and I look forward to hearing his contribution.
I believe we are at an inflexion point. The drastic cuts in overseas aid that are taking effect now may be a political debate for us, but they are a matter of life or death for the poorest. David Miliband called the cuts
“a blow to Britain’s proud reputation as a global humanitarian and development leader”.
They not only harm our national standing but undermine the health of our international institutions and risk destroying the critical humanitarian infrastructure it has taken decades to put in place. Last year, overseas aid was £14 billion. Next year, it will be £9.2 billion—the largest cash reduction in our history. At a time when the need has never been greater this century, the UK’s contribution to addressing that need has never been lower this century.
The World Food Programme has seen the number of those dependent on emergency food aid increase from 135 million to 318 million in five years, yet the Government have announced that they are cutting the WFP budget by 29%. The International Committee of the Red Cross is wrestling with the devastating effects of 130 armed conflicts around the world—twice as many as 15 years ago—yet the Government have cut its budget and are also cutting the budgets for other conflict prevention work. Those conflicts are causing mass movements of populations. The UNHCR has identified that as many as 117 million people may have been displaced—the greatest number since World War II —yet we are cutting the funding for organisations caring for those people at this time. Disease is on the increase around the world, yet we are cutting our contribution to Gavi, the Vaccination Alliance by 24%. It has been a brilliant initiative, saving millions of lives, and the ONE Campaign has estimated that this alone will cost around 600,000 lives.
If the Government insist on implementing these cuts, it will not only cost lives but diminish our reputation abroad and undermine our security at home. That was the view of Dame Anneliese Dodds MP, who courageously resigned as International Development Minister last year rather than implement the cuts. In a resignation letter to the Prime Minister, she said:
“Ultimately, these cuts will remove food and healthcare from desperate people—deeply harming the UK’s reputation”.
She is not alone. That used to be the position of Rachel Reeves, when she was shadow Chancellor. In a passionate speech in the House of Commons, speaking about the then Government’s decision to reduce aid from 0.7% to 0.5%, she said:
“If this cut goes through this evening and the House votes for it, it will diminish Britain. It will reduce our power and influence for good in the world, and it will undermine our security here at home too”.—[Official Report, Commons, 13/7/21; col. 220.]
She was right.
Often through mere accident of birth, many of us have had the enormous privilege to live in the best country on earth—the sixth richest nation economically. We have immense hard power as a nuclear weapons state and great diplomatic power as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, and our cultural soft power is admired around the world. But with great power comes great responsibility—a responsibility to protect and to honour our promises, especially to the world’s poorest.