International Aid: Treasury Update

Alicia Kearns Excerpts

Programme motion
Tuesday 13th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Melton) (Con) [V]]

I am enormously proud of our record of supporting the most vulnerable and using aid to make our people and those around the world safer, but we have suffered the biggest recession in 300 years. That is not a situation that we could have predicted when I fought the election on our manifesto promises, yet the International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Act 2015 explicitly anticipated this sort of crisis where a departure from targets is necessary.

If I had been asked during the election whether I would reconsider the 0.7% commitment, I would have said, “Yes, but only in the very darkest of times,” and if the last year or so has not been the darkest of times, then what is? Since my election, we have faced an enormous number of difficult choices. In Rutland and Melton those difficult choices and dark times have looked like this: the Government having to support 17,900 jobs through furlough and 4,500 individuals, and underwrite nearly £123 million in loans—that is almost half of all employee jobs in Rutland and Melton that we had to save. That support was necessary, but the costs pose real risks for the future, too.

Even with the reduction in UK aid, we remain the second largest donor in the G7. The taxes of residents of Rutland and Melton will continue to go towards saving lives, disaster relief, peacekeeping, and tackling climate change. We should be proud of that, and I hope that the reorganisation of the FCDO can augment our capacity to respond to crises outside of the ODA budget through the new conflict centre.

But today in the Chamber hon. Members have criticised the Government by arguing that other G7 countries are not temporarily reducing their ODA budgets, yet in 2020 we were one of only two G7 countries to meet that target and we are the only one to do it every year since 2013. Perhaps it is because those countries have not met their commitments in normal times that they do not now need to make a temporary reduction; indeed, they had no plans in the first place to meet the 0.7% they promised.

With this temporary reduction, we will still exceed the funding provided by every country bar one; we will remain one the most generous countries in the world. This is a temporary measure that recognises the fiscal duty we have to our children. It recognises that we will still stand by those most in need, and the Government have defined the fiscal circumstances in which we will return to 0.7%. This does not diminish our country, and, while this is a difficult decision, it is the right one for now because we have faced the darkest of times.