UN Sustainable Development Goals

Lord Bruce of Bennachie Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bruce of Bennachie (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox; her points about technology are well made. I thank too the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, for giving us the chance to have this debate. My only concern is that when we have these debates, it is the same group of people who are debating. It is unfortunate that the rest of the Chamber does not realise how important and central this is. It is not a peripheral issue, and yet I am afraid that too many of our colleagues regard it as such.

Nobody should underestimate the damage done in the last few years to the UK’s global reputation and the impact and influence we have. Those of us who travel—most of us do—have met people who have told us how they looked on in astonishment at our clumsy, bad-tempered exit from the EU, our threats to tear up international treaties, our disregard of international and domestic law, our slashing of our world-class international development assistance.

Even with Covid, we developed the vaccines, but did we share them with the developing world, as we had indicated we would? No, we did not. Unless we are honest about what we have done to our reputation, it will be difficult to start the process of rebuilding it.

Boris Johnson’s destruction of DfID and slashing of the aid budget, after promising to do neither, shocked our partners and opened the door for others to move in to the space we have vacated. The point has already been made that the cut was a lot worse than just going from 0.7% to 0.5%. That was bad enough, but the £4.273 billion paid domestically, which should be going to development abroad, as the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, has said, has reduced the budget in practical terms to some 0.3%, not 0.5%.

I acknowledge that at the end of the last government, Rishi Sunak tried to do some rebuilding by putting the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, and Andrew Mitchell back in place. The rot was stopped at that point. Nevertheless, we must recognise that we have a lot of work to do if we are going to get back to where we were.

I had the privilege to chair the International Development Committee during the period when the UK delivered 0.7%. Not only did we set an example and encourage others to follow, but the quality of what we did was world class. It was untied to British commercial interests and focused on poverty reduction. We led the world in programmes empowering women and girls, delivering on education and health, and rolling out vaccines. What we are doing now is a shadow of what we were. I am glad that spending on Africa and Asia is beginning to recover, but it is from a much lower base.

I was recently told that the UK’s offer in many countries, once ranked as the best in the world and on a par with the Americans and the World Bank, is roughly equivalent to Sweden’s. No disrespect to the Swedes, who have always been generous with aid, but our population is more than five times Sweden’s, and yet we are delivering only at that level.

The nub of what I have to say is a political point. As the UK has diminished its reputation and influence, China and Russia have stepped in aggressively. They have moved in offering billions of conspicuously spent dollars of assistance with few questions asked, and certainly not focusing on poverty reduction. Until the demise of its founder, the Wagner Group operated as semi-licensed mercenaries of the Kremlin across Africa. It has now morphed into a state agency called Africa Corps. It is offering billions to acquire mineral rights and securing political support for Russia in the United Nations.

This is accompanied by a massive incursion into acquiring or developing media outlets pouring out propaganda against the democratic world. The BBC World Service, which is being forced to cut back because of budget constraints, estimates that Russia and China are between them spending between $4 billion and $8 billion a year acquiring or developing media assets across the global South. When the BBC, as part of its cuts, gave up its presence in Lebanon, Russia immediately picked up the frequency it vacated. These outlets are not promoting freedom, human rights and pluralism but denouncing ex-colonial powers such as Britain as unreliable exploiters, despite the irony of their own mercantilist expansion. Unfortunately, that propaganda has traction when countries look at the way we have behaved in the last few years.

Where are those who looked, and look, to us for leadership to turn in the light of this decline? How can we ensure, for example, that the Commonwealth still upholds the rule of law? I suggest to the Minister—I do not think I am speaking to closed ears—that these are immediate and urgent challenges for the Government if we are to start rebuilding the profile. We had it; we need to have it again.

I appreciate that a global impact review is taking place, but we need to take urgent action now and rebuild the cross-party consensus that sustained what was delivered and ensured that people were able to see that the politicians and the people were as one. It is too easy to use cheap comments such as “cash machines in the sky”—an ignorant and deeply offensive comment by Boris Johnson.

To the detractors of aid, I say that reducing poverty, malnutrition and hunger and providing clean water and sanitation are not only the right things to do but make a safer world and improve the chances of getting people in countries to share values. Narrow selfish nationalism always diminishes us. When they have been given the opportunity, the majority of British people have always shown strong support for compassion at home and abroad. The problem with the argument that charity begins at home is, as we all know, that it stays at home.

I have just visited Zambia, and I saw some concern that our presence was visibly reduced. Everywhere I went people said, “Where are you? What has happened to you? Where have you gone? Are you coming back?” I think I could find that in many countries across Africa. But I did see one or two quite encouraging things. I declare an interest as an adviser to a company called DAI. I was looking at some of the projects it is delivering on behalf of USAID. I also saw a couple of other organisations that I have a personal connection with. I chair a charity called Water Unite, which provides money to companies in-country to build sustainable provision of water and sanitation, and I went to a company called Jibu, a franchise operation which is providing clean water to businesses and individuals at an affordable and therefore sustainable level. Its ambition is to have a franchise operating in every part of Zambia. It is operating across east Africa. I saw a different Zambia- registered company, inspired by British interest, delivering investment in renewable energy by linking it to markets and ensuring therefore that although there is room for some aid in development, actual markets and the private sector can unlock real practicalities.

The Liberal Democrats have stated that we would commit to 0.7% immediately and would also re-establish DfID. I know that the Government are not going to do that, but I echo what everyone else has said, which is that the Government have made a commitment that they are going to do it. We have a Budget coming up. We have to see that progress is started in this Budget. I hope that the rumours suggesting not only that that will not happen but that the aid budget might be further cut will prove to be unfounded. It would be a terrible mistake if the Government went down that route.