Lord Lansley
Main Page: Lord Lansley (Conservative - Life peer)
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, I was a member of the Government who achieved 0.7% of GNI for our aid budget in 2013. I do not remember, as a member of that Government and as Health Secretary at that time, our being awash with money. I do not remember us thinking that we could cut the aid budget and it would enable me, for example, to avoid the smallest increase in NHS budgets since the mid-1970s. We took the view that we had both moral imperatives and global ambitions that could be achieved only by reaching 0.7% of GNI.
What has changed since then? It is not that humanitarian or other needs across the globe have diminished. On the contrary, what has changed is that we are now facing two crises: the pandemic and the climate crisis. We know, as the noble Lord, Lord McDonald of Salford, said, that none of us is safe from the pandemic until all of us are safe. With the climate crisis, avoiding carbon emissions in developing countries is equally as valuable as reducing carbon emissions in the United Kingdom. On both crises, we are supposed to be in a leadership position, as the noble Lord, Lord McDonald, rightly said: by making vaccines available for the pandemic, and by doubling our support for climate adaptations in developing countries in the next five years.
The only other thing that has changed is that we have left the European Union and we are supposed to forge our own path as global Britain. To reduce our overseas development aid budget is completely contrary to that. We should reverse the cuts and restore the 0.7%.