Development Aid Budget

Lord Bruce of Bennachie Excerpts

Monday 3rd July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bruce of Bennachie (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, for giving us the opportunity to have this debate. I found her opening speech interesting and a little challenging. Having had the privilege of being chair of the International Development Committee when ICAI was set up, seeing that process proceed and working with the National Audit Office, I agree that we have got to a much better system for accountability, but there is always room for improvement. In the beginning, ICAI was accountancy-led, but it became much more understanding of the complexity of development and therefore more effective. There is certainly justification for transparency, but we also have mechanisms in place that can improve it. The noble Baroness identified that there is a danger that if we call for too much we will create a whole other industry of evaluation and monitoring that might get in the way of delivery. I draw noble Lords’ attention to my interests as set out in the register.

Not surprisingly, given my background, I am a strong believer in the effectiveness of UK aid and its impact. I have had the privilege of seeing it in action in many parts of the world. However, I recognise that the way aid is carried out and its objectives are not well understood, certainly by the wider public. As many people have said, we should do it, because in spite of all our problems we are a rich country and, frankly, people living in this country cannot really comprehend how you can live on less than $2 a day.

I also accept that it is perfectly reasonable for the Government to want to offer practical examples of positive results and to show that aid is justified by altruism—there is nothing wrong with that—but it also serves the national interest. There is nothing wrong with using aid to strengthen the economic capacity of developing countries so that they can grow their income and tax base and lift their people out of poverty. On the contrary, in the end that is how we can achieve sustainable development. It is also in our interest to ensure that as countries industrialise, which the right reverend Prelate mentioned, they do so in the cleanest and most environmentally sensible way, which is not necessarily the cheapest, so it is perfectly legitimate for them to look for some assistance.

Most of us welcome the cross-party commitment to delivering 0.7% and wish it to continue and to continue to be pro poor. I hope that the Government will continue to resist calls to cut the aid budget—as, for example, this weekend, in order to fund ending the cap on public sector pay. That would be raiding the poorest people in the world in order to fund easing relative poverty at home and would be a shameful misuse of resources.

It is also worth noting that, contrary to what many critics believe, the aid budget is under pressure. There is an idea that we cannot get rid of the money and that somehow spending it is difficult. The refugee crisis has led to unprecedented sums being spent supporting displaced people across the Middle East. The UK can be justifiably proud of that response, but it has come at the expense of longer-term development funding. Clearly, the devaluation of sterling in the past year has reduced the purchasing power of the UK aid budget. The exchange rate differential between the UK and developing countries has altered by more than 20% in many cases. Can the Minister give any indication of how many programmes have or are having to be cut as a result? People in the department have told me that that is clearly happening.

The IDC recently reported on the role of contractors and partners. NGOs, private sector contractors, think tanks and private businesses are all legitimate and important partners, but the recent report on that use of private contractors led to a focus on Adam Smith International, which was severely criticised for co-ordinating its evidence to the Select Committee. Although there is no evidence that the evidence was actually fraudulent, it was certainly not particularly well constructed. As a result of that, my understanding is that DfID has halted or cancelled a significant number of ASI programmes, leading to about a third of the staff in that company being made redundant currently. That is unfortunate, because it is the dedicated professional delivery staff who are losing their jobs as a result of mismanagement at senior management level. Again, this could have implications for the delivery of programmes if they are terminated before they are followed through or completed. Can the Minister indicate how many programmes have been disrupted and what action is being taken to ensure that the aims of these programmes can still be achieved? I make it clear that I have no interests in ASI and no connection with it; nor have I spoken to it. This is only what I see and hear.

Can the Minister also explain how DfID monitors and works with the impact of ODA spending by other government departments? A number of noble Lords have raised this point. We have had indications or hints in the past of a turf war, with some Ministers being reportedly, not publicly, less respectful of the role of DfID in ensuring that ODA is compliant with both UK and international law and that it meets genuinely pro-poor development objectives. I am in favour of joined-up government, and there is nothing wrong with ODA being spent by several government departments as long as it is co-ordinated and coherent and the same rules apply across the piece. The noble Baroness who spoke before me mentioned King’s and the Ebola crisis in Sierra Leone, which was a good example of cross-government and cross-departmental work that helped to deliver a solution to a problem that got out of control.

Generally speaking, the Foreign Office and DfID can work well together, especially where they are collocated in our embassies overseas, which mostly they are. Indeed, that is a virtue, because it is good to get the political environment and development objectives co-ordinated and not operating in separate silos. I am certainly in favour of that.

According to the Library briefing, the business department is the department that accounts for the largest share of non-DfID ODA. Again, this is not necessarily a problem, but I do not think many of us are really quite clear exactly what the business department is doing with that ODA money. Most of it may well be going into the climate fund and/or the prosperity fund, but, again, could the Minister, either now or subsequently in writing, give more details of the main development objectives in the business department? That would reassure people who are concerned and give us a better understanding of how the departments work together.

I will raise another issue quickly. Can the Minister provide an update on DfID gender policy and the prioritisation of disability in our aid objectives? Canada has just published its new development strategy—I have a copy here—which it explicitly defines as feminist. There is no doubt that the low status of women and girls in many countries is the single biggest barrier to development. I know this issue is dear to the heart of the noble Baroness, Lady Tonge, who is speaking after me. Access to effective family planning and safe abortion is craved by millions of women, along with freedom from violence, from female genital mutilation, from child marriage and from exploitation. Lack of legal and financial rights also holds development back.

The Canadian example contrasts sharply with the Trump policy, which really is trying to deny women access to these services. The Government have a very good record on this, but now that the Netherlands and Canada have stepped up to the plate I wonder whether it will be pushed even further up the priority list in their new development strategy.

Can the Minister give us any update on disability commitments, which my noble friend Lady Featherstone championed when she was a Minister, as she did the issues of violence and female genital mutilation? I have a particular interest in deafness, but I believe that standing up for the rights of all disabled people in poor developing countries is something that donors such as the UK should prioritise. Too often they are swept away, ignored and stigmatised. Challenging stigma and encouraging all policymakers to champion a positive approach to supporting disabled people should surely be an integral part of development programmes.

I conclude by saying that providing women with legal rights, access to contraception and better maternal and child healthcare has been shown to have a positive impact on reducing poverty and limiting potentially explosive population growth. Back that up with better education and skills training and the seeds of successful development are sown. Let us not be diverted by cutting our aid budget or redefining it in ways that reduce the impact on ending poverty. Let us do what we set out to do, which is to use our aid budget to make the quality of life of the world’s poor better and to eliminate poverty by 2030.