EU Withdrawal

Debate between Lord Howell of Guildford and Lord Butler of Brockwell

Wednesday 13th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

The explanation would take longer than the time I have available. I shall share it with the noble Lord afterwards but the basic point is that services are the expanding side of international trade. Standards have to be negotiated with America, the European Union and so on, and within the EU of course, but also with all the great new markets of Asia, Africa and Latin America, where the big expansion of services will be. There never was a clear single market in services. We hoped for it but it never worked. We face the same problem there as we are facing throughout the world. It is perfectly straightforward that in this area old-fashioned customs arrangements affect only solid physical goods; they are a declining part of the system. Therefore, concern with old-fashioned arrangements is becoming less relevant.

[Lord Butler of Brockwell (CB)]

I follow a great deal of what the noble Lord said but physical goods still have to cross the border, and I am not sure what solution he has for that on the Irish border.

International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill

Debate between Lord Howell of Guildford and Lord Butler of Brockwell

Friday 6th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Butler of Brockwell (CB)]

My Lords, I support the amendment, the purpose of which is to remove a fixed target—“the”—and to replace a flexible target, “a”. That is the purpose of the amendment and it seems desirable.

I contribute to this debate as a former Permanent Secretary of the Treasury in charge of public expenditure, where the noble Lords, Lord Lawson and Lord MacGregor, who have put their names to the amendment, were my bosses. However, I support the amendment not out of Treasury niggardliness but because, like other noble Lords, I believe that this country has both an economic and moral interest in promoting the growth of the developing world.

However, there are good Treasury and government reasons against hypothecation of expenditure against a rigid target. The reasons are set out in the report of the Economic Affairs Committee. However, one reason that is not in the committee’s report is that at each public expenditure review departments have to come to the Treasury to make a case for the expenditure for which they are bidding. If there is a rigid amount hypothecated in this way, it relieves departments of having to make that case for expenditure. The removal of that discipline is likely to have the result that the expenditure would not be as effective as we would all like it to be. It would be a mistake to remove that discipline from DfID’s expenditure on development aid.

This is a matter for each Government to decide. There should not be a rigid amount and, therefore, I support the amendment to substitute the second “the” with the word “a”.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My noble friend Lord Lawson made an interesting speech. It did not command the total agreement of your Lordships in every aspect but it focused on some important points. It is a small, very neat, amendment but it raises implications. I beg those who are bringing forward and supporting the Bill, with the noblest intentions, to heed some of the points that are made because it will result in a better Bill.

I also apologise for not being able to join in at Second Reading—I had other commitments—and for the fact that, although I spoke frequently on Foreign Office and Commonwealth Affairs aspects of development aid from both sides of the Dispatch Box over a period of 10 years, I have not spoken on these issues from the Back Benches. However, I have been deeply concerned with development issues over a period of 50 years, going back to the era of the Colonial Development Corporation, the original CDC, before its efforts were later wrecked, I am sorry to say; and with the founding of the first Overseas Development Institute, before we even had a department of development. I regard development as the highest priority for this country and anything which gets in its way concerns me. We ought to try to clear out the obstacles. I am proud that we have become what Sir John Major called the development hub. It is a marvellous role for this country and we should pursue it in the smartest, cleverest and most effective way we can.

It worries me that without this amendment, by making it “the” duty—the first priority, in effect—of the Secretary of State to adhere to this 0.7% target, we are distorting and damaging the development cause, which has moved into a completely new phase. I read with great care the Second Reading debate—