Foreign Aid Expenditure

Andrew Mitchell Excerpts

Monday 13th June 2016 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Mr Wilson. I draw the House’s attention to my relevant entries in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I visited Jordan last autumn with Oxfam to meet Syrian refugees, and I worked with the Aegis Trust charity, which does important work preventing genocide, including in Rwanda.

As Chair of the Select Committee on International Development, I welcome today’s debate and the high attendance and public interest. As the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) said, this is not a new issue. The United Nations General Assembly adopted the 0.7% target in 1970, and, as she said, Governments of all parties have committed themselves to it ever since.

[Mr Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)]

rose—

[Stephen Twigg]

I give way to the former Secretary of State.

[Mr Mitchell]

On the hon. Gentleman’s first point, about the number of people here today, will he join me in urging the usual channels to go back to the principle that used to exist of having an annual full-day debate on the Floor of the House on international development? Today’s attendance shows that we are missing that and need to have it restored.

[Stephen Twigg]

I will certainly do that.

The 0.7% target was first achieved by the UK in 2013. Just five other countries achieved it as well: Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Luxembourg and the United Arab Emirates. We need to recognise that there is genuine public concern—the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) spoke about the Twitter debate earlier this afternoon—with some saying we should simply not be spending that amount of money and some raising issues about what the aid is spent on. It is important that we engage seriously with those concerns that our constituents are raising. That is why the International Development Committee takes its scrutiny role very seriously. As others have said, we have unique support in doing that. Not only do we have the work of the National Audit Office, but thanks to the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), we also have the Independent Commission for Aid Impact. The onus is in particular on those of us who support the 0.7% target to ensure that the money is spent properly and that we deliver value for money. I pledge today as Chair of the Committee—I know other members of the Committee, from all parties, agree with me—that we will seek to ensure that that is delivered.

There are many practical examples of the real difference that this investment makes; I want to refer to a small number of them. One is Ebola, which has been referred to by a number of Members. Our report on the Government’s response to the Ebola outbreak praised DFID for playing a strong, leading role in co-ordinating the response in Sierra Leone, which made a real, practical difference and saved lives. DFID set up Ebola treatment facilities in Sierra Leone to improve the response, providing additional beds and greatly improving the country’s capacity to fight Ebola. On polio, the United Kingdom is supporting the programme for polio eradication, with the aim of ensuring the full vaccination of 360 million children by 2019. Those are real examples where we can make a difference to people’s lives.

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[Mr Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) on moving the motion and on doing the House a favour by encapsulating most of the key arguments. I look forward to seeing his words repeated faithfully in The Mail on Sunday next weekend.

Nothing antagonises our constituents more than the stories of hard-pressed taxpayers hearing that their hard-earned money has been spent corruptly. DFID is one of the most transparent Departments, if not the most transparent, in Whitehall, and it is precisely to promote the necessary openness that in 2010 we set up the Independent Commission for Aid Impact, which has been much mentioned this afternoon. The commission was not entirely welcomed by the development community because it is independent and because it reports not to Ministers, who can sweep inconvenient truths under the carpet, but to Parliament—it reports not to DFID but to the International Development Committee. That Committee is not appointed by Whips; it is elected by its peers and encompasses a large number of independent-minded Members. The Committee is led, of course, by the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) who, though burdened by being a member of the Labour party, is nevertheless a fearless, independent operator. I say to the House and to The Mail on Sunday that the ICAI is their friend. If there are allegations or suggestions of improper use of aid, it is to the ICAI that they should be referred.

Of course, the independent commission covers the whole budget, not just the money spent by DFID. Nearly 25% of money now goes through other Departments. I stopped aid to China and to Russia, which inexplicably was still receiving aid in 2010, and negotiated the winding down of the programme in India, which since the second world war had always been our biggest programme. If the Foreign Office chooses to spend money in China, or indeed south America, where DFID no longer has any programme, it is no good for the Foreign Office or other Departments to try to hide behind DFID’s skirts and coattails. They need to explain to the public why they are spending money. If they cannot do so, they should not be spending it.

I have a lot of sympathy with what my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) said. This is an important debate, and the Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday have done a service by emphasising it. As a Ugandan Foreign Minister once said to me, Ministers in this country and in his go straight not because they see the light but because they feel the heat. The campaign led by the Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday puts the heat on Ministers, who must respond to these matters. Although I do not have time to discuss it, I hope that The Mail on Sunday will allow a rebuttal of the wholly inaccurate points that it has made about the Centre for Global Development and the airport at St Helena.

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[Ms Abbott]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that Somaliland is an example of how we are doing things right, although we would not see that on the pages of The Mail on Sunday.

[Mr Mitchell]

Is the hon. Lady aware that Somaliland absolutely makes her point? It has a budget of around £50 million, of which Britain provides something like £10 million, while the remittance value is more than £400 million. That shows that we must all look at more creative ways of ensuring that remittances are well used.

[Ms Abbott]

I agree. I come from a community that sends remittances. Not only are they very important and the diaspora communities that provide them true partners in development, but it is important that they are used creatively. I have been to the camps in Lebanon with Human Appeal and I visited Syrian refugees in Turkey, so I have seen for myself how well our aid can be used and how important it is.

Some very unpleasant remarks have been made about the Palestinian Authority. I am all for transparency and accountability, but let us remember that United States Secretary of State John Kerry said:

“Prime Minister Netanyahu made clear he does not wish for the collapse of the Palestinian Authority”.

He pointed out that, without the Palestinian Authority, Israel would have to

“shoulder the responsibility for providing basic services in the West Bank”.

The ODI report on the matter clearly said that the UK support on the ground helped to prevent economic collapse and an escalation in violence.