Development Aid Budget

Lord Purvis of Tweed Excerpts

Monday 3rd July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, as there is such common ground between us on these issues and he speaks a great deal of sense. I agree with him that we are lucky to have the opportunity, courtesy of the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, to raise these issues today in a full debate in Parliament. In doing so, I also, from these Benches, welcome back the Minister to his brief and welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, to her Front Bench role as a Whip covering this department. I wish her well.

There is no doubt that, when it comes to spending more than £13.5 billion of public money, there should be full and relentless scrutiny of how, where and on whom it is spent. This is a public duty on us as parliamentarians. Full accountability needs to be applied to Ministers or officials, too, if any of that money is misspent or misdirected. Focusing on these questions, rather than whether we should meet the 0.7% target, is a point on which I agree with the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, very strongly indeed. There is a wide consensus on this. This was shown during the passage of the International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Act 2015.

If I have one area of slight disagreement with the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, it is that I think it is still not the case that everybody agrees that aid works. There is still a school of thought that does not believe that overseas development assistance works and that development comes purely from private sector sources. I am not of that school, but many of those who hold that argument like to peddle a myth that the bulk of UK ODA is frittered away or wasted on corrupt programmes. When asked to provide evidence, they usually point to an individual programme that they happily mispresent in the process. Because it is impossible to deliver such a large budget without some errors or some programmes along the way that fail, these are used in vain against UK ODA over all. However, I suspect that that will not be the focus of this debate this afternoon, which is welcome.

Section 5 of the International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Act 2015 covers the independent evaluation of the extent to which UK ODA,

“represents value for money in relation to the purposes for which it is provided”.

I agree very much with the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, that this is hard. Given the breadth and the complexity of ODA across many different fields, it is often easier to calculate a numerical output for some aid programmes and harder to calculate outcomes, especially when many of these programmes are delivered in very difficult circumstances. It is also harder when UK aid programmes are delivered in a certain way that is not always consistent with the in-country way of budgeting and of delivering public services.

It is 10 years since I served on the Finance Committee in the Scottish Parliament. We had regular debates there about delivering services in the UK, when it came to public sector intervention, and about what outcomes were delivered, rather than simply outputs from the financial inputs. However, I am pleased to say that, since the passage of the Act, the structures in place for Parliament to scrutinise this work are proving effective. Indeed, in the most recent review of its own procedures, the Independent Commission of Aid Impact, which has been referred to, highlighted not only the number of reports it has carried out but also the fact that the Government listen to its advice. Many of the recommendations made by this independent body have been taken into consideration by DfID and acted on. Indeed, through the sub-committee of the IDC Committee in the Commons, the accountability to Parliament is also here.

I have no deep-seated objections to UK ODA being delivered by departments other than DfID, but we have to be cautious. The ambition of 40% of ODA being delivered outside DfID has had little debate in this House. I cannot recall since I have been a Member having a full debate on ODA in government time considering these issues. I do not doubt the commitment of the Minister when assurances are given that, for example, the department will not be subsumed into the FCO, and I hope that that will not allow any mutterings from those who argue for this to be the case. That is a distraction. In last week’s debate on the Queen’s Speech, the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, questioned whether it would be better simply to amalgamate all development, diplomatic and security presence around the world into one, so there are still some voices. However, I hope that they are in the minority and do not distract us from where we really need to focus.

We have also seen growing global UK leadership on transparency and the calculation of effectiveness and delivery. In many respects, it is the delivery standards of DfID that are now being seen across the world as the leading approach. The 2015 Act requirement on government to demonstrate value for money and effectiveness is deliberately broad enough to ensure that all Whitehall departments have to be scrutinised by ICAI and be equally accountable to the IDC and not only to their own scrutiny committees in Parliament. Can the Minister assure the House that all necessary agreements are in place across Whitehall to ensure that that can be done properly and that there are no barriers to ICAI doing its work?

This is important not only to demonstrate to our own public that money is being well stewarded but because across the world we want to see the growing UK leadership in this respect being carried on. In the Global Fund’s Aid Transparency Index, the UK, with its full government department, is the only country in the world that has retained its top status since the global transparency index of 2013. Other countries have looked to DfID as the exemplar and have copied our approach. In 2013, there were 26 donor countries in the very poor category of transparency; in 2016, there were only five. This is welcome. Interestingly, while the UK scored 88.3% on aid transparency, Italy scored just 16%, France 9.2% and China a derisory 2.2%. Given the extent of the delivery of trade and concessions for aid from China, Africa and elsewhere, a level of scrutiny on their programmes is almost impossible to carry out.

There is no question that the UK is a leader overall. It was therefore with more than a little concern in that regard that I read the Conservative manifesto, which pointed to a slight differing in the direction going forward. In his response to the noble Lord, Lord Collins, in Questions today, the Minister indicated only part of the commitment in the Conservative manifesto. It states:

“So we will work with like-minded countries to change the rules so that they are updated and better reflect the breadth of our assistance around the world”—


which is what the Minister said. However, the following sentence states:

“If that does not work, we will change the law to allow us to use a better definition of development spending, while continuing to meet our 0.7 per cent target”.

This begs the question whether the Government have ruled out unilateral changes to our approach on ODA. We have not only complied with the DAC rules but have been a leader in their delivery. Can the Minister rule out any unilateral moves away from that?

Which are the like-minded countries referred to who also wish to change the rules? What changes are the Government seeking? Can the Minister give examples of specific projects that are not currently covered under OECD rules that the Government would like to see counted as aid? What assessment have they done of the impact that increased links between defence and aid may bring about—if, indeed, this is the Government’s intention? I hope the Minister will have an opportunity to address some of these points.

Finally, on the basis of the continuing and very welcome wide consensus in this House, I have said that the UK comprises just 0.6% of the world’s population but that we punch considerably above our weight on the international stage. I feel that this may well be diminished by Brexit, but that is a separate issue and for a different debate. The UK is a global citizen and we demonstrate leadership around the world, so if the Prime Minister’s tagline of a “global Britain” is anything, it is indeed that British aid works, that UK leadership is gaining results and that we should do nothing to undermine it.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Lord Bates) (Con)]

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in paying tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, for securing this debate. It has been extremely useful and one of those occasions when you look at the wealth of expertise both in and outside this House and are not quite sure whether at the end of it you are supposed to give a speech or should have been taking notes. Of course, it has been a combination of both as I have gone through this debate.

The noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, has a distinguished track record in this whole area. She outlined, rightly, the need for evidence-based analysis of what is working here. We also heard during the course of the debate from my predecessor, my noble friend Lady Verma, who left a tremendous legacy from her time as Minister. I publicly thank her for that. Many of the areas in which I now deal simply continue excellent initiatives that she began. I also join others in welcoming my noble friend Lady Sugg to the Front Bench as Whip. She will be a tremendous support because, again, she has such experience and expertise in this area.

If I were to try and answer all the questions presented to me, we would exceed the two-and-a-half hour cut-off line—perhaps even the two-and-a-half hour cut-off line for my speech. I have a limited amount of time, but I am very keen that we are able to draw on the wealth of expertise in this House. I will look for an opportunity, I hope before the recess, to continue some of these discussions we have had today.

UK aid plays a vital role in helping the world’s poorest and most vulnerable. That is both morally right and in our enlightened self-interest, as we were reminded. One of the other themes of the debate has been that the world has changed. The noble Lord, Lord McConnell, referred to that in particular. We talked about the changing nature of some of the pressures. I want to dive straight in to the ODA issue mentioned by so many. It is an area of focus.

The rules of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee were set up some 40 years ago, when the world was a very different place. They have been changed only once in the past 40 years. That process of changing them, once, in March 2016—as the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, and the noble Lord, Lord Collins, referred to—took a period of four years to agree. This is a slow-moving area because the Development Assistance Committee works by consensus. We have been very keen to say that we want to share our concerns with our friends. That has literally just begun through our communication process. At this stage, I cannot give a run-down of who our friends are in these particular areas or what each of them are coming to us to say are the areas they would like to see changed and improved.

However, they have looked at particular areas such as climate change. That is something on which 40 years ago there was perhaps not the same focus so we need to look at it. Some elements of research that you can do into climate change are not ODA eligible, yet they benefit, as many have mentioned, the poorest on the planet. There is also violent extremism and countering terrorism—the new threats we face. Do the rules allow and capture all that has been done in this particular area? There is migration on a huge scale around the world, almost unprecedented in our history—certainly post-war—and that raises new challenges. So when, for example, we deploy Border Force cutters in the Mediterranean to intercept the people-traffickers who make fortunes out of other people’s misery and put their lives at risk, and when we work with the Libyan coastguard to try and improve their security and safety, are these not areas that we ought to be able to consider as part of our overall effort?

There is also trade. We talk about trade and development. The only way we are able to achieve that aspiration set out by the former archbishop of not creating dependency—referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Judd—is by trade. Look at the number of people in extreme poverty, which reduced by 50% between 1990 and 2010. What was the reason for that—was it the levels of aid? No, it was the levels of trade, so those are very important to us. That is also the reason why the Secretary of State for International Trade and the Secretary of State for International Development jointly announced that one of our ambitions is to maintain and build upon the preferential trade arrangements for the 48 countries in Africa to be able to trade into the United Kingdom tariff-free. We recognise that that is incredibly important to us.

The noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, referred to the issues of monitoring. Many noble Lords referred to the level of monitoring that goes on. He referred to the possibility that there might even be an excess of monitoring in some respects. Of course, at the moment overseas aid is, in the UK, probably one of the most scrutinised of any spends that happen anywhere in the world. That is one reason the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, was right to point to the International Aid Transparency Initiative’s rating of DfID as world-class and world-leading in the way that it does aid. We have nothing to fear from transparency because that is part of the way we learn and gather information about this. I direct noble Lords to the website “devtracker”. It is a bit of a catchy name, but the Development Tracker is an incredible resource, enabling you to see exactly, in real time, what is actually happening on which programmes and who is delivering them. You can read the independent evaluation reports carried out and see how much money has been paid—as I say, in real time. These are ground-breaking methods of transparency that are recognised internationally. Of course, then we have our own quality assurance, and that has been added to a whole new—

[Lord Purvis of Tweed]

I do not wish to interrupt the Minister’s flow, but he has quite substantially moved on from the area of the DAC and OECD. With the greatest respect, I was waiting for him to answer the point that a number of noble Lords across the Chamber asked about the line in his party’s manifesto that, if there were no agreement within the OECD and DAC, the Government would propose unilateral action and bring forward legislation to change the criteria for ODA in the UK. All of us asked him to reflect on that and perhaps move away from it, especially in the context that he no longer has a majority in either House. This would be a good example of listening to a great deal of concern that moving unilaterally would not be in the best interests of the UK in this area.

[Lord Bates]

I do not want to parallel or parody debates taking place on other aspects of government policy and exiting the European Union, but I can assure the noble Lord that we have no red lines. We are still developing what the issues are that we would like to address. We began that process talking to the NGOs. I would like to continue by talking to Members of your Lordships’ House about what the issues are, citing some of the problems and talking it through with officials. Of course, then we need to present that to colleagues. So it is not a firm, baked plan, which we are demanding or otherwise we will go out on our own. We have said we are quite determined that there are some issues that need to be addressed and we want to share that with people and work together in a consensual way.

Returning to the point about examination and monitoring, of course we have our own internal quality assurance. We also have the National Audit Office. We have the Independent Commission for Aid Impact, which has been cited. The noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, asked about the CSSF. That was one of the ICAI reports that the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, referred to, where that scrutiny is beginning to happen. There is also the International Development Committee in the other place, of which the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, was a distinguished chair for 10 years. Again, we have a very good working relationship with that committee. It is rigorous, but there is a partnership because we all want the same thing—namely, to eradicate extreme poverty.

Then we have the sustainable development goals, which a number of noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Collins, and my noble friends Lady Verma and Lady Jenkin, referred to. They are going to introduce a whole new level of scrutiny. Again, it comes back to the point about the Development Assistance Committee. Forty years ago, we did not have the millennium development goals, never mind the sustainable development goals. Now we have these new goals that introduce whole new categories—such as beneath the ocean or peace and conflict, which the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, referred to—that we need to work on.

I was asked what the Government are doing in respect of the SDGs. We published our Agenda 2030 in March. That was the cross-government response to that. The Office for National Statistics has announced a consultation looking at the best way of producing data and statistics in these matters so that we can track our progress towards the SDG aims. It has some very important elements in it. The noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, was concerned about how those data might be connected. There is a huge new initiative taking place across the UN institutions about collecting data, particularly on the sustainable development goals—what actually works and how it should operate. That is being done by the UN Statistical Commission. We have representation on that and we will follow that, and publish routinely and regularly, in accordance with the requirements of the SDGs, how we are progressing. We will also be able to see online how other countries are progressing towards them. I think this is going to be a major step forward—to reassure the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, among others—because once we see countries’ own self-assessment of where they are lagging behind and where they are progressing, we will have an additional level of data to help us ensure that our resources are directed to those who are in greatest need.

The noble Lord, Lord Bruce, also asked why BEIS is the second-highest ODA spender. Of course, that is because the primary objective of BEIS ODA is research and innovation—to reduce poverty by generating and putting into use knowledge and technology to address development challenges and advance development for the poorest in the world. The noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, gave the example of King’s College working in partnership with the Government of Sierra Leone on Ebola. What has been achieved through this, and more widely through development, is incredible, but we still have a long way to go. We have rigorous ways of monitoring the impact and communicating the achievements.

I know that at this point the noble Lord, Lord Judd, will be flinching in his seat, but I ask him to bear with me on impact because it is leading to the subject of effectiveness. We can see that development aid is changing the lives of the world’s poorest. Just today we read about the outbreak of cholera in Yemen, and there is the World Health Organization with 1 million cholera vaccines, desperately trying to get safe access. It is true that you cannot separate the security elements from the humanitarian need in this respect. The noble Lord, Lord McConnell, referred to this as well. Without the security elements, we will not be able to get those vaccines to those who need them.

Just last week, I returned from South Sudan. I was delighted to hear the analysis and the experiences of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Truro. I saw the terrible situation there. Were it not for the World Food Programme and DfID’s contribution to that, 1.6 million people who are relying on airdrops of food, through a completely man-made conflict—this is not to do with climate change but entirely to do with the civil war which is raging on the ground—would have their lives put at risk. Therefore, to say that you can somehow separate the security dimension from the humanitarian dimension is not correct.

I will speak about other government departments. The noble Lord, Lord McConnell, referred to the Building Stability Overseas Strategy. Of course, we now have the UK aid strategy—Command Paper 9163—produced in 2015. I do not want to quote extensively from it but that is our new marching point for this and includes significant elements on how we are going to work with global peace, security and governance. I commend it to noble Lords. It says:

“All departments spending ODA will be required to put in place a clear plan to ensure that their programme design, quality assurance, approval, contracting and procurement, monitoring, reporting and evaluation processes represent international best practice”.


It is also right and absolutely fair to say that other government departments are not quite at the level of DfID at the moment. We do not want to crow too much about that because they have not been doing it for as long. My noble friend Lady Chalker is in her place. There is a long tradition and expertise in that area in government, which we want to retain. But that cannot be any reason not to aspire to the highest standards. We have said that we want all government departments that are delivering ODA to be rated either good or very good within five years. An ODA senior officials’ group now meets regularly across government to ensure that lessons are learned and we can assist other government departments in doing that.

The noble Lord, Lord Bruce, mentioned disability. Again, this is part of the SDGs and leaving no one behind, which is a key part of what we are doing. Looking again at our disability strategy is also something that the Secretary of State, Priti Patel, has made a personal passion of. We will be putting additional resources towards that.

The noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, and the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, mentioned small grants. I covered this subject in the exchanges in Questions about the small charities challenge fund.

The right reverend Prelate also spoke about what churches could be doing in this area. I will be meeting him tomorrow. Again, I turn to the example of South Sudan. When I was in South Sudan, I met Archbishop Deng—a very gracious man—the Archbishop of South Sudan and Sudan. There are 100,000 churches in South Sudan. What an incredible network that we could be using for peace and reconciliation. I also met Bishop Anthony Poggo, who I am sure is well known to the right reverend Prelate.

The noble Lord, Lord McConnell, mentioned the catalytic impact of private sector investment and the £2.5 trillion gap in private financing. We need to get much more private capital in there. Governments cannot do this alone through ODA. It needs to be through trade, private investment and, increasingly, government assistance providing a catalytic role in that.

Without doubt, UK aid is making a significant contribution to tackling the global challenges of our time. The Government agree wholeheartedly on the importance of measuring its impact so we can fully understand and continue to improve on the very significant contribution the UK is making to the world’s poorest, to stability and prosperity here and to eliminating extreme poverty by 2030. I look forward to continuing these discussions as weeks go on.