International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill

Lord Newby Excerpts

Friday 27th February 2015 Lords Chamber

1: Clause 1, page 1, line 2, at beginning insert “Subject to the assent of the Treasury following each Spending Round,”

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, I thought it might be to the benefit of the House if I reminded your Lordships of the rules of debate on Report. The Companion states:

“On report no member may speak more than once to an amendment, except the mover of the amendment in reply or a member who has obtained leave of the House, which may only be granted to: a member to explain himself in some material point of his speech, no new matter being introduced; the member in charge of the bill; and a minister of the Crown … Only the mover of an amendment or the member in charge of the bill speaks after the minister on report except for short questions of elucidation to the minister or where the minister speaks early to assist the House in debate … Arguments fully deployed either in Committee of the whole House or in Grand Committee should not be repeated at length on report”.

[Lord Butler of Brockwell (CB)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 1, I make it clear at the outset that I have no objection to the Government committing themselves to the 0.7% target for international aid. As I said in Committee, I believe that the Government have both a moral duty and a national interest in doing what they can to promote the growth of the developing world, provided always that that development aid is effectively spent. My concern about the Bill is on two aspects. One is that since it does not apply to the present Government, its only purpose is to remove the freedom of future Governments on matters which it should be for them to decide. The second is that, uniquely, it seeks to exempt this public expenditure programme from the discipline which applies to other such programmes.

The purpose of this amendment is to address the second of those points. It is to ensure that this programme is subject to the same disciplines that apply to other public expenditure programmes which also have great merit, and where there are also legal obligations—programmes such as those on health, education and defence. When we read daily about the strains which are applying to those programmes and the challenges that face them in the years ahead I cannot see why this programme, whatever its merit, should not be subject to the same disciplines.

There is another reason why this programme should similarly be subject to the discipline of public expenditure rounds. In those periodic rounds, expenditure programmes are required to consider and make their case again to the Treasury, to face Treasury challenge, and indeed to make a case about why expenditure should remain at the same level or even be increased. As I also said in Committee, that is a very useful discipline and it is in the interests of the programmes themselves, because it helps to ensure continuous effectiveness and value for money. To give a particular programme exemption—to give it, as it were, a statutory entitlement to a sum of money—without the challenge of each public expenditure round is not in the interests of that programme itself or of the rigour which should apply to public spending.

It will not have escaped notice that the other noble Lords to have put their names to this amendment are all former members of the Treasury, and there is a reason for that. The Treasury has long experience of attempts to hypothecate particular types of revenue, or indeed, as in this case, of national income, to particular public expenditure programmes—and it does not work. We have always lived to regret it, and previous programmes have always been reversed. That is not something that we should depart from in this case.

The amendment proposes that the Secretary of State should indeed be subject to the duty that the Bill proposes, but that that duty should be subject to the discipline of successive public expenditure rounds. The fact that the Treasury has to signify its agreement is not a way of making the Treasury particularly powerful but to give an assurance that the discipline has been undertaken.

The nub of the matter is this: it seems incumbent on those who would oppose this amendment to make the case for why this programme uniquely should be exempt from the discipline that applies to other public expenditure programmes of great importance where there is also a moral duty and a national interest in providing first-rate public services. What justification can there be for dealing with this programme uniquely? That is the case that those who would oppose this amendment have to make. I beg to move.