Foreign Aid Expenditure
Debate between Andrew Mitchell and Stephen Twigg(8 years, 5 months ago)
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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 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.