International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill

Lord Collins of Highbury Excerpts

Friday 23rd January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, on bringing forward the Bill, and Michael Moore on introducing it in the other place. It is vital that we debate these issues and have a full and frank exchange of opinions. As the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, and my noble friends said, it is worth remembering that the provisions of the Bill featured in all three party manifestos and in the coalition agreement. All sides of this House passionately support the legislation. I also welcome the noble Lord, Lord Fox, to the House and congratulate him on his excellent maiden speech, which made the points that are at the heart of the matter.

For many here today, the Bill marks a point in a journey that can be traced back through the establishment of the Department for International Development by the incoming Labour government in 1997 and the adoption of the target by the Government back in 1974. It is a long journey, as many noble Lords have pointed out. I congratulate my noble friend Lord Judd on being on that journey all the way. He has been a fantastic advocate for the past 45 years.

As we have heard, the Bill will be a catalyst to action by other countries as, this year, the world agrees the sustainable development goals and how we can end global poverty over the next 15 years. For me, development is about tackling the imbalance of power—politically, economically and socially. Labour’s vision for development tackles that imbalance by expanding freedoms as well as signing cheques, measuring success by the change that we make, not the cash that we put in.

Too often, people say that there is a choice between the interests of rich countries and of those in the developing world, but improving tax fairness benefits both the developed and the developing world. All of us, rich or poor, will be affected by climate change. It might seem that the powerful and the powerless live in different worlds, but it is one planet and we need to change how it is run. Our global contract with the developing countries needs to reflect that.

As many noble Lords have said in this debate, passing the Bill means that the question becomes less about how much we spend and more about how we spend it. As the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, highlighted, it is right to ask whether a larger development budget can be delivered by an ever smaller department. There are real worries that, in a bid to cut costs, the department has kept the bureaucracy but is losing some expertise and, with that, the ability to lead.

Your Lordships’ Economic Affairs Committee questioned the effectiveness of the target, saying that,

“the speed of the planned increase risks reducing the quality, value for money and accountability of the aid programme”,

as we have heard in this debate. I do not see the primary point of DfID as simply distributing aid; rather, it is to help to change the world by redistributing power, as my noble friend Lord Judd said. As the aid budget rises, so must our ability to control it. That is why Labour strongly supports the Independent Commission for Aid Impact. Value for money should mean maximising the impact that we make. When a budget as important as this is ring-fenced, there is a fiscal responsibility and a moral duty to deliver as much change as possible for the money that we invest, and the sort of value for money is crucial.

As my noble friend Lady Kinnock said, aid and development work; development changes and saves lives. Life expectancy is rising while preventable deaths are falling. More children are in school while fewer mothers die in childbirth. Literacy is storming ahead while polio is mostly in retreat. This is all in part because of aid and international development efforts across the world.

As, again, we have heard in this debate, development is also in Britain’s best interests. Britain invests in development to prevent extreme poverty, climate change and conflict. Retreating from that responsibility one way or another will still carry a cost, as the noble Lord, Lord Steel, said. The way to eliminate that cost is to tackle it at source. The UK would be immeasurably better off growing and trading with a strong global economy, with a sustainable climate, supportive Governments and secure borders. That is what British development helps to achieve. Tackling the big global issues can save us billions in the future.

I strongly agree with the sentiments of the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin: I do not believe that this House should impede the progress of the Bill by further amendment. There is an opportunity for us to put this on the statute book, and we should not miss it. This is a very small Bill on just a few sheets of paper. It will save hundreds of thousands of lives of people that we will never meet and whose names we will never know. In years to come, we will look back with a real sense of pride on what we are achieving together today.