International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) (Amendment) Bill [HL]

Lord Purvis of Tweed Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 18th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, it is a real pleasure to follow the noble Lord. I think I speak for the whole House in saying that we recognise his commitment to, and knowledge of, this area, and his contribution in this morning’s debate proves that even more.

A considerable coalition of support led to the international development Act reaching the statute book in 2015. That included: the previous Labour Governments from 1997, in particular when Gordon Brown was in the Treasury; the Conservative Party, in particular under David Cameron, with its strong stance on this position; and, in government and in this House, the great forbearance and patience of the Government Chief Whip in the Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, who worked with me and supported me at sometimes tense moments. His commitment and that of others, especially from those such as the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson, led to a great deal of consensus in this House.

I particularly welcome the noble Lord, Lord Bates, to his position. He is extremely highly regarded in this House, and I know he will be a great addition to the department. I look forward to him summing up the debate today.

Like the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson, I have been in the Bekaa Valley this year and seen those fleeing the terrible crisis in Syria. I have been in northern Iraq a number of times and seen internally displaced people fleeing Daesh, all supported by DfID programmes. UK aid is literally saving lives today as we debate the Bill. That needs to be recognised.

The coalition of support also included NGOs, which were unanimous in their view. For my own party’s worth, I said in the Second Reading debate that we were delivering a manifesto commitment. That manifesto was the 1970 general election manifesto, where my party had our commitment before the UN adopted it. The former MP for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk, the right honourable Michael Moore, who piloted that Bill through the House of Commons, and my colleague my noble friend Lady Northover, who was at the Dispatch Box on behalf of the Government, together with other parties and NGOs, all had a desire to move away from what the noble Baroness, Lady Chalker, described movingly in her Second Reading speech as the struggle that she had as a Minister, who could start a year not knowing what level of aid she could commit to programmes at the end of the year. Her challenge as a Minister had lived with her over the following years. I was struck by her commitment to this area.

I commend the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, for allowing us to continue to scrutinise, to challenge and to question our development budget, not least because it is the public’s money, after all, and it is of a very large scale and a very large amount. Proper scrutiny and continuing questioning of it is valid. It is the role of parliamentarians to do that. I also commend him for his consistency, given his contributions to the Act, but while I commend him for his consistency, I do not think he will be surprised to learn that I think he is consistent, but not correct.

In some respects, I could understand if the Bill argued against meeting the target altogether. Some are making that argument in the rather reactionary right-wing press. We can see that their argument is that the aid budget should be slashed entirely. Thankfully, the vast majority of people are not calling for that. I remain slightly confused that the Bill seeks to amend the existing law in a way that would make the noble Lord’s complaints about the legislation on the statute book even more egregious. It is a perplexing paradox that legislation designed to improve an Act would actually make it worse.

In most respects, this Bill is a version of the amendments that the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, tabled to the international development assistance Bill in February last year. In presenting his arguments then, he said:

“It is intended to avoid waste, to provide ministerial flexibility and to help in the management of our national budgets”.—[Official Report, 27/2/15; col. 1854.]

These are all very laudable aims, but I fear that the position has not really changed between then and now: his amendments would actually make the situation worse.

The Permanent Secretary of DfID told the International Development Committee in the Commons on 4 February last year, when asked about moving from an annualised budget to a rolling three-year programme:

“If you take a rolling three-year programme, what that means is for years one and two you have a lot of flexibility. In the third year, by definition, you have to hit a precise number, because it is the end of the rolling three-year period. In the fourth year, you also have to hit a precise number, because you are dealing with what you had in years two and three. In the fifth year, you are dealing with years three and four. In a rolling programme, you get the benefit in the first year and possibly the second year, but not at any point thereafter. You are locked in after that”.

In many regards, over the five-year period that the noble Lord asks for, we would lock it in even more. Add to that the greater uncertainty that comes from saying that it is simply an average over the period—we do not know whether he is arguing for an average or just a combination of each year—and we would really gain nothing from flexibility towards the end of the rolling period anyway. This is harder from year four of the first period. Locking in greater uncertainty is no way to bring about the aims that the noble Lord is asking for, and which the Act actually delivers. Far from offering greater ministerial flexibility, it would fundamentally defeat the entire purpose of trying to put stability and certainty into development programmes.

As the ONS statistics said yesterday, we are, in effect, in year three of meeting the UK target under a consistent statistical reporting mechanism that the ONS has recognised in its own papers. The 2015 Act now establishes this as the norm going forward, and that is very helpful, especially in the context that we still have to operate under DAC reporting rules, and DfID operates under its own relationship with the multilateral bodies on an annualised basis anyway. In effect, this Bill, unfortunately, cuts the ground from under the 0.7% commitment in its entirety.

For those who continue to argue that we should withdraw our legislative certainty and dilute our aid commitment, the two words “Aid works” are the simple repost. I spoke, as many noble Lords will have done last Sunday, to many young people who were taking part in Remembrance Sunday, about development assistance. It made me reflect back to when I was their age—to when I was 16. The combination of growing aid and concerted effort means that only 14% of people living in developing countries live on less than $1.25 a day. In 1990, it was 47%. We have made very significant progress.

Some 59 million deaths from malaria, measles and tuberculosis have been averted since 2000. There has been a threefold increase in the economies of the least developed countries between 1990 and 2014. Green energy investments in new renewables in many developing countries has gone from $45 billion in 2004 to $270 billion, leading to renewables such as wind, solar and biomass generating an estimated 9.1% of the world’s electricity. Most importantly, I think, 137 million more children worldwide were enrolled in primary school in 2013 than when I was 16 in 1990. Just imagine the benefit for the world’s future. The number of countries where an equal number of boys and girls attend school has increased by nearly 75% since 2000.

I use all these statistics to show that aid works. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson, said, UK leadership in aid is now working, recognised by the Global Fund replenishment conference, by the Canadian Government and by the funding for development conference in Addis Ababa—the list is long of where the world is recognising the UK commitment.

Finally, when introducing the 2015 Bill in this House I asked: if the UK was a global citizen, what kind of citizen would it want to be? I confess that I did not expect then that the world would see the UK leave the European Union and the USA elect a racist, nativist, narcissist, bigoted billionaire as its head of state. In an uneasy world, our citizenship in the world must surely be seen as forward-looking, stable, open, tolerant and giving, where we grieve here when there is conflict elsewhere, where we are ashamed when children are born malnourished and continue into adolescence with poor health, and are angry when girls are prohibited from reaching their full potential. The UK is a leader in global goals and in financing for development. We know that the development pressures in the world are unprecedented, but we also know that we can eliminate absolute poverty and end chronic disease that affects those least developed in our lifetime.

I commend the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, for his consistency, but he will not be surprised that I humbly submit to your Lordships that we reject the Bill he is arguing for this morning.