Future of DFID

Alex Chalk Excerpts

Wednesday 27th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

Britain is an instinctively compassionate, outward-looking and humane nation, and we rightly expect our country to lend a hand in the struggle against poverty, misery and injustice; long may that continue. However, our country also has a keen sense of fairness. The British people want and expect taxpayers’ money to be used with integrity, and allocated sensibly and in accordance with their international priorities. Before I look at the central tenet of the speech made by the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle), it is worth considering the sums of money we are talking about; that has not yet been discussed.

The 0.7% translates to approximately £14 billion. To put that into context, I was at a meeting this morning looking at legal aid in the criminal justice system—indeed, in the overall justice system—and we spend about £1.6 billion a year on legal aid. Or what about the schools high needs block, which funds such things as special educational needs, a big issue in my constituency? Its budget is about £6 billion. Our entire prisons budget is about £4 billion. Although the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown, is right and is entitled to criticise, let us not forget the very significant sums of money allocated by this country. We can hold our heads high because we meet the commitment. The United States, France, Germany, Italy and Spain do not. This House must not fall into the trap of thinking that we are somehow skimping on our international obligations. Far from it. We stand comparison with any nation on earth. The former Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), who spoke with his customary passion and eloquence, made that point crystal clear.

If we are to ensure that the British people retain their enthusiasm for meeting international commitments, it is critical that the rules be modernised and the money allocated in a way that meets priorities. Lest we forget, priorities change all the time; we must not be tone deaf to those changes. Although it is appropriate to keep a separate Department, there is a case to broaden its scope. I am delighted that the Government have acted with a great sense of purpose. I note, for example, that where the Development Assistance Committee’s rules are outdated, the Government have led the way in pushing for reform, so in October 2017 the UK secured an increase in the proportion of aid spending that can be contributed to peacekeeping missions. That is perfectly understandable and reasonable, but there is one central point that we also ought to consider in this House: the Department for International Development. Is it the exclusive purview of the £14 billion budget, or are there other broad areas that we ought to consider?

When I go to schools in Cheltenham—we ought to consider the next generation—one of the key concerns about Britain’s role in the world and how we want to express ourselves internationally is not so much to do with development but with conservation. The people in Charlton Kings Junior School that I spoke to are deeply concerned about plastic pollution, flora and fauna, biodiversity, habitat protection and climate change. The point that I want to make gently is that of course we must be internationalist and globalist, and we must continue to have a role in the world that shows that Britain is on the right side on the great moral issues facing our planet, but should that exclusively be about development? I think we need to have a debate in this House about whether there are other global priorities that we ought to consider.

When I see the tide of plastic in the Pacific ocean, I want us to do more. When I see species losing their habitats in sub-Saharan Africa and the hideous effects of climate change, I want to do more.

[Mr Mitchell]

My hon. Friend rightly talks about conservation, but that comes under the 0.7%, and the three things he has just mentioned are within the official development assistance rules and also come under the 0.7%, so I think I can lift his spirits a little.

[Alex Chalk]

To some extent it does, but cosmetic changes could be made. Why can the Department for International Development not be the Department for International Development and Conservation? That would send an important message. Also, we ought to be far clearer about the amounts that we can allocate to such causes. There is a huge amount of pushback, inevitably, from the likes of Oxfam. I understand why they would want to protect their realm, so to speak, but we could lean into these areas far more effectively; that would be more consistent with the instincts of the British people, and would gain further support.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) for securing this important debate. It is a shame that Members feel that they have to bring such debates to the House, when we thought we had settled the matter of the Department for International Development, as has been said over and over again today.

It is a pleasure to follow so many assured and supportive speeches, the majority of which gave total support for the future work of the Department for International Development, and to follow the former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell). The hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) gave an excellent speech; he does a lot of important work with the World Bank on behalf of this House. The hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) gave an outstanding speech that showed that if we look at this matter independently and objectively there is no question about the need for the independence of the Department, the 0.7% and all the arguments that he went through. On my own side, I follow the former Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas), and my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle), who is a member of the International Development Committee.

In 1997, when Labour established the Department for International Development, Clare Short, the first Secretary of State for International Development, told the House of Commons that her Department had

“been given the most noble and honourable work that anyone could be asked to do.”

She said that eliminating global poverty, while

“both…affordable and…achievable”,

was also

“the single greatest challenge the world faces.”—[Official Report, 1 July 1997; Vol. 297, c. 116.]

In the two decades since then, politicians from across the political spectrum have ensured that this country steps up to that challenge.

The International Development Act 2002 ensures that all aid spending remains tightly focused on poverty reduction overseas and is not diverted to other ends. In 2014 Parliament improved on that and passed the International Development (Gender Equality) Act, to ensure aid spending strives to tackle the associated challenge of discrimination against, and oppression of, women and girls. In 2015 Parliament enshrined in law the commitment to spend 0.7% of national income on overseas aid, making us one of only five donor countries to meet the internationally agreed commitment.

Since DFID was established 22 years ago, it has become a global leader in international development. Every year it spends UK aid in ways that make tangible differences to people’s lives the world over. DFID has helped some of the world’s poorest people realise their right to health and education. It has provided emergency life-saving aid for people caught up in major humanitarian crises and has led the way in bringing gender equality into the mainstream through its development work. The UK public should be proud of the development work that their money has supported over recent decades, but all too sadly they do not hear the success stories of UK aid and the work of DFID. Instead, they hear a loud and vocal anti-aid lobby, which does its best to discredit the work, as many Members today have mentioned.

The charge against the country’s aid programme is spearheaded by a small number of major media outlets, who revel in spinning and stirring the few occasions when UK aid programmes might not have worked as we had hoped. They are hell bent on driving a hysterical hatred of the UK’s work to end global poverty. The anti-aid media narrative is a serious problem, but even more worrying are attacks from a number of Tory Members, which have many guises. I will mention three of them.

First, there is the straightforward misspending and diverting of aid away from poverty reduction. Last weekend the Guardian reported a letter sent to the Chancellor from 23 international development agencies, raising their concerns about the way Ministers are spending aid. They warned him that aid is being diverted away from the poorest countries in order to promote commercial and political interests. From using aid to help UK companies expand their businesses overseas, to suggestions that aid be spent on UK naval ships, we are seeing more aid than ever being spent on projects that no one sincerely believes are about reducing global poverty. Those attempts do nothing but feed into the idea that the UK aid programme is a waste of UK taxpayers’ money.

Secondly, there are blatant attempts to dissolve the Department altogether. It is no secret that the former Foreign Secretary wants to see the Department dismantled. Earlier this month, he threw his weight behind a report that said DFID should be folded back into the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and that the UK’s aid budget should be slashed. Such a move would be a disaster for the country’s aid programme. It is only DFID that has the specific and sole purpose of poverty alleviation and a dedicated staff working to achieve this goal. Merging the Department with the FCO—or any other Department for that matter—would dilute the agenda and see more money diverted away from poverty towards other foreign policy interests.

We can learn from Australia, where the international development department was merged with the foreign office, with a number of negative knock-on effects. The country’s strategic vision for aid was lost, the Government witnessed a brain-drain of development expertise and an estimated 2,000 years of collective experience left the department.

We already know from our own experience, where almost one third of our aid is spent outside DFID, that only DFID meets the highest spending standards. The Aid Transparency Index, the only independent measure of aid transparency among the world’s major development agencies, rated DFID “very good”, while the FCO’s aid spending was rated “poor”, according to the same measure. Likewise, the ONE Campaign recently launched an aid index that rates aid spending by different Departments. It found the FCO to be “weak” on its ability to keep aid focused on poverty, and that no other Department spends aid as well as DFID.

The third threat, which is related, is the worrying challenge to our aid and development work presented by the persistent undermining of the very concept of aid. The Secretary of State has made clear her desire to change the definition of aid. She recently launched a consultation on her plans to reduce the amount of public money that needs to be spent on aid by counting profits from private investments towards the aid budget. There are no two ways about it—aid is either spent to alleviate poverty and the causes of poverty, or it is invested to make a profit. The Labour party rejects any attempts to commercialise the UK aid budget.

The Secretary of State has said that she thinks the 0.7% of aid spending is unsustainable. Will the Minister expand on that comment, which was reported to have been made in a Cabinet meeting? We know that the Secretary of State wants to rewrite the international rules set by the OECD that govern aid spending. In the context of the sustained threat that is faced by DFID and ODA, I am delighted this debate has been called.

Anyone who believes that this country has a role to play in international development must be ready to defend the Department and the budget. I cannot fathom why some people are so obsessed with eroding and ending aid.

[Alex Chalk]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it was right for the British Government to seek to rewrite the rules to allow aid spending to be used to deal with some of the appalling consequences of the dreadful storm in British Overseas Territories? Does he agree that it was appropriate that British aid should go towards that deserving cause?

[Dan Carden]

As we heard from the hon. Gentleman’s earlier contributions, maintaining the focus of the 0.7% is the most important issue. If we keep trying to erode and change the definition of aid, we are not backing that concept.

It disgusts me that people put so much energy into blocking support for the world’s poorest people, when a fraction less than 1% of our country’s income is spent on aid. I am a proud internationalist and I am proud that my party was responsible for setting up the Department for International Development. I believe the country’s aid programme is about morality, justice and pragmatism.

It is a shame that we are debating whether we should continue with our UK aid commitments and whether our world-renowned Department for International Development can survive many more years of Tory in-fighting, or be saved from being turned into a political football in any future leadership contest. I hope the Minister can give some guarantees on behalf of the Government.