International Development: Budget

Lord Bishop of Derby Excerpts

Tuesday 11th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Derby]

My Lords, I, too, would like to add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Empey, for introducing this debate, and I hope that noble Lords will see that not only do the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester and I sit on the same Bench, we have a similar view on this issue. I thank my friend and colleague the noble Lord, Lord Judd, for his wisdom. I hope that I can simply embroider his words because he has said all that needs to be said. Not least is the point that this is not simply about a crude choice, it is about priorities and the particularity of aid alongside the necessity of the military.

I need to declare some interests. I am a trustee of Christian Aid, but tomorrow night I shall be having dinner with the adjutant of the Royal Hospital Chelsea, so I have some military friends and connections as well. I want to take a steer in my brief remarks from the Book of Common Prayer. The morning prayer, the second collect, is as follows:

“O God, who art the author of peace and lover of concord”.

I shall explore the difference between peace and concord. Peace is a spiritual state. It wells up in our hearts, developing harmony and good will towards others. It is what drives aid, it is what unites us across this House, and it is what unites the British people in the Government’s policy to protect 0.7% of our income for aid. There is a desire for peace through harmony, generosity and connection.

When we come to the concord bit, we have to put in place arrangements to deliver it, and it is concord that we cannot agree on. That is where we need political arrangements and sometimes military interventions to try to ensure that there is some concord. These things do not fit together easily and must be properly distinguished. I want to look at each of these emphases and put some questions to the Minister.

If we think about ordering, about the concord that we have to try to create and support across the world, my military friends would remind me that the military has always been involved in creating concord through delivering what we call aid or humanitarian support. I can give examples of this from Alexander the Great to the Napoleonic Wars. More recently, there is a priest in the diocese I serve who was in the Royal Air Force. He tells moving stories about his time as a serviceperson of being involved in humanitarian work such as the rebuilding of schools and getting supplies through lines in order to feed people who were trapped behind them. There is a long and important tradition of the military playing a constructive role in the delivery of what we would call aid. In that sense, we need to look at that military capability, which is often important in a natural disaster. Aid agencies tend to need to plan and budget carefully, but the military has the resource and dynamism to get in there and connect. If the military is going to be part of the aid scenario, we have to look at how that co-ordinates with what we understand about aid, aid agencies and DfID. Is there a case for joint training and planning, especially in relation to natural disasters, and should a co-ordinated effort be made? It is a question that can be asked and it needs to be pursued.

Let us think about the peace that aid agencies, DfID and others stand for alongside the military trying to develop and preserve concord, particularly through aid exercises. Let us think about aid more narrowly—the peace that comes from the heart through trying to connect human beings by helping women and girls, reducing infant mortality or whatever it might be. As the noble Lord, Lord Judd, said, there are tensions because, to deliver aid, people try to offer a kind of neutrality about the political context of finding order and concord. Whether there is peace or disorder, aid needs to be delivered.

Aid agencies and those in partnership with DfID try to work in partnership with the local, and often the local can see aid workers, if they are associated with the military, as foreigners and the enemy. Therefore, the aid operation on the ground, working through partnership, is put in serious danger by being associated with a foreign power.

Of course, as we have heard, the whole aid thrust of DfID and the aid agencies is about poverty reduction. It is not just about good ordering and trying to create the stability that people need. It is about positive things, such as tax justice, land distribution and trade arrangements. There is a much bigger agenda than the military can ever be involved in. So there is a place for military co-operation with the delivery of aid in some contexts. However, that must not compromise the ability of DfID and aid agencies to deliver aid in complex situations where it might be a handicap to be associated too closely with military operations that are associated with interference from a foreign power.

I conclude by asking the Minister to address a number of questions. First, will poverty eradication remain the key purpose of UK aid? Secondly, will the 0.7% commitment be targeted to aid and development and ring-fenced from foreign policy costs? Could there be some kind of quadruple lock to preserve that? Thirdly, what plans are there for the MoD and DfID to work more closely together? Fourthly, does the Minister recognise our concern for aid work if we blur the boundaries between military activity and the provision of aid? That puts the whole credibility of aid and those who deliver it in serious jeopardy.