Official Development Assistance and the British Council

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Wednesday 30th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Tom Tugendhat]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I have spoken to the Mines Advisory Group about its work in Lebanon, which has been so important, not just in promoting our interests. Sadly, it will almost certainly be needed not just in Iraq, where it has operated at some points, but in Syria.

[Dr Murrison]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that £6.8 million of the spend by the Foreign Office last year was not “ODA-able”, which is a remarkable thing, as our support, in particular to Lebanese armed forces, has enabled land in Lebanon to be farmed by farmers who have not seen that land for 50-odd years?

[Tom Tugendhat]

My right hon. Friend makes an essential point: the OECD definition of what is “ODA-able” is historically anachronistic. He is right to say that we need to update it and that spending money on the armed forces who keep the peace and allow development is an essential building block of development, and therefore should be ODA-able. That is a slightly separate point to the one I am making, but I am very grateful to him for making it. As a right hon. and gallant Member, he knows well the strength that the armed forces and indeed the royal naval surgeons can bring to any theatre.

My next point is about the change to our footprint in Mali, Niger and Chad, where we have just opened embassies, which I welcome. I am glad that we are extending the Foreign Office’s footprint. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Rochford and Southend East (James Duddridge) is the Minister responsible and has visited or will no doubt soon visit all three of those embassies and missions. When he does so, I hope he will take with him the best wishes of the whole House to the staff there.

Of course, in such areas of the world it is not enough to have just nice words; we also need nice actions. The actions that we need our diplomats to be able to complete are those that promote our interests and values and, indeed, the interests of the people in those areas. Those things are not terribly surprising: they are democracy, the rule of law and the education of women. I have heard the Prime Minister speak about them so often that I can rattle them off not quite in my sleep but pretty much. It is certainly true that we are doing all the right things when we have the capability; the challenge is that for Mali, Niger and Chad there is no budget line. We will therefore see our efforts branded as the work of the World Bank, the World Food Programme and many other organisations. They are fantastic organisations, but that will reduce the impact of global Britain.

I am a little concerned about the cut to our funding for research on tropical diseases—from £150 million to £17 million. As the House may know, the Foreign Affairs Committee is doing an inquiry into global health security, and we have been hearing how that investment is essential to the maintenance of future capabilities against pandemics. We are all aware of the pandemic we face today but, as the House knows, it is not enough to shut the stable door after the horse has bolted; we need to try to predict when the horse might be getting a little jittery. For example, we know the effect we have had in making sure that Ebola never broke out in the UK —although there was a limited incident when one nurse came back with it.

In Nigeria, a country of which I am particularly fond—forgive my bias, but I think it is a quite remarkably vibrant, brilliant and engaging country—we have been cutting our ODA spend again. This leaves me somewhat confused. Health makes up 34% of the current allocation and education about 11%, so a cut of 58% is very likely indeed to cut into those things.

I hope the House can see that although I welcome strategic alignment, I do not think that ambassadors are admirals or that consuls are captains. What I do think, however, is that this House and, indeed, this Prime Minister have set a strategic vision for Britain in the world that seems to have got lost in translation between the Cabinet table and the Foreign Office. I question, very slightly, whether or not a moment of deep thought, alignment and reinvestment might just bring back a bilateral and a multilateral into balance, and perhaps when we get back to 0.7% that will give us the global Britain we have all asked for.

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[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

It is a genuine pleasure to follow the very powerful speech from the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis). I congratulate the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) on introducing the debate.

It is incredibly moving and, I think, poignant just how much agreement there is across the House. When does it happen like this? It is rare, and so is the absence of dissent from those on the Government Benches. Usually, someone will intervene to bolster the Minister—for whom I have a lot of sympathy for having to defend this stuff—but now the silence is deafening, and the reason is that the Government know this is not the right thing to do. The Government would be defeated in a vote and that is why they do not want to give us one, to put it bluntly.

This also matters because of how ordinary people across the country are seeing the effectiveness of Parliament. They also have genuine concerns about the effectiveness of this Government. My constituents in Oxford West and Abingdon care deeply about this, as one might expect, and many of them work in this area. Keith Hyams, for example, is a researcher and member of the Global Challenges Research Fund’s strategic advisory group, which is UK Research and Innovation’s main funding vehicle for ODA research. He wrote to me to outline the projects that he is involved in. They include youth groups based in slums in six African cities, seeking to understand how covid is affecting life in the slums; a project in Cape Town, with the city’s local government, looking at how climate adaptation can include some of the most vulnerable populations in the city; and a large project tracking the effect of covid on indigenous peoples.

Keith Hyams writes:

“It is difficult to imagine that project partners will be willing to trust UK collaborations again, having invested heavily in existing projects only to have funding pulled out midway through with very significant consequences for organisations reliant on the funding that they receive.”

He says that he does not want to see GCRF funds rescued at the expense of something else, but that

“there are better ways to implement these cuts than abruptly ending”

live projects. Why end live projects? Why not let the projects run their course and then look at how we can find savings down the line? The taxpayer value question, which the hon. Member for Rotherham raised, is very important. Why do it this way?

Talking about covid, Oliver Pybus, an epidemiologist at the University of Oxford, received an email to say that funding for his project is to be cut. His project helps track genomic variants in places such as Brazil—the P.1 variant, which emerged in Brazil, now has its own name; it is known as the gamma variant. How on earth is cutting that funding in our interests, when we know that the biggest strategic threat to our recovery from the pandemic, now that we have hopefully broken the link between covid infections and hospitalisations, is a new variant that will most likely emanate from somewhere where the people have not been vaccinated? How will cutting the funding for such projects help us? It is foolish and pointless.

People out there—our constituents—are beginning to notice. The last time I spoke about this matter in this place was on 15 June, days before the Chesham and Amersham by-election. Like many on the Opposition Benches who take an interest in foreign affairs, we accept that this is not always the most relevant concern on the doorstep—I occasionally hear it, but potholes and planning reform often take precedence. I was therefore genuinely surprised, in a good way, when aid cuts spontaneously came up on the doorstep in Chesham and Amersham as an example of why this Government could not be trusted.

One could be forgiven for thinking that those people were just Lib Dem or Labour voters anyway, but they were not. They were angry—an emotion I was also not expecting—because they were Conservative voters who had voted for the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) in 2019, giving him the benefit of the doubt, and now they felt that their vote was being taken for granted, and that this was as sure a sign as any that the Tory party had moved so far away from what they considered to be their roots that, for the very first time, they were planning to vote Lib Dem.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

Perhaps Chesham and Amersham is a little unusual, but certainly that is not the message I am hearing from my constituents in South West Wiltshire. Neither was that the message given to YouGov in its polling of last November, which showed that 66% of the public were in favour of the temporary cut from 0.7% to 0.5%.

[Layla Moran]

Yes, that may certainly be the case, and I will come to polling in a moment, but the right hon. Gentleman may be interested to know that other polling that has been done—the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden referred to it—shows that if we ask the question, “Do you think aid spending should increase or decrease?”, the proportion of people who think it should increase has leapt nine percentage points this year, to 53%. The direction of travel on that question is upwards.

[Dr Murrison]

rose—

[Layla Moran]

No, I will continue, because this is the important point. To be perfectly honest, as a Lib Dem looking to take seats off the Conservatives in the blue wall, I welcome the Government’s complacency. The Coalition for Global Prosperity has done polling in those seats, and I know that this is not the sole issue—it is not even the top issue—but it is an issue, and it is one that many Conservative voters, especially in those areas but, actually, across the country, care about. When I raised that with the Foreign Secretary the day before the by-election, he said of voters in Chesham and Amersham:

“I do not think that they will be that daft”.—[Official Report, 15 June 2021; Vol. 697, c. 122.]

Well, they did vote Lib Dem, in quite surprising numbers.

The ink will dry on the PhDs that will be written about what happened in that seat, but the point I am trying to get across to the Government is that this matters. This is not just about the spending on one project here or there. It is the moral thing to do and it is the smart thing to do, but it is also the right thing to do, not just for the country but for their seats. People in those areas understand the interplay. They understand the link. They understand that if we want to sit proudly on the world stage and lead at COP26 but say to other countries across the world, “Do as we say, but don’t look at what we do,” then we are going to lose credibility. I urge the Government: please do not be complacent. Give us our vote, or even better, give us the assurance that 0.7% will return next year—no ifs, no buts.

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[Harriett Baldwin]

Indeed, that is an excellent point. People are very strongly in favour of vaccinating the world, and that is why I very much welcome the pledge made at the G7, which I understand will be in addition to the 0.5%. No doubt the Minister will confirm that.

[Dr Murrison]

Just on the subject of polling, the British Foreign Policy Group, which is hardly a right- wing organisation, polled this issue earlier this year. Some 72% of people would like to see a cessation or reduction in aid until the financial situation is resolved. We are in danger of batting these figures backwards and forwards. We must rely on what we hear on the doorstep. I do not know what my hon. Friend’s doorsteps are like, but mine are quite unequivocal on this matter.

[Harriett Baldwin]

What I would say is that there is one poll I would like to take—it is the one that Mr Speaker has asked us to take in this House—and that is a vote on whether the 0.7% should be changed to 0.5% on a forward-planning basis. That is the poll I would like to take. Last week in Prime Minister’s questions, in response to a question from my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), the Prime Minister indicated that today’s debate on the estimates was that vote.

I have looked into the matter, and I understand that if we voted down today’s estimates, not only would all diplomats stop being paid immediately, but a vote against estimates can only be done to reduce a budget, rather than to increase a budget. That is why I am perfectly happy to support today’s estimates, but I would like to see a separate, stand-alone vote on whether we should go from 0.7% to 0.5%. If this House agrees that, I do not have any problems with the constitutional situation. I think that would override what is in the International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Act 2015. We need to see a test through a poll of the Members of this House.

I am delighted to see that the economy is recovering very fast at the moment here in the UK, which I hope will mean that next year’s budget for overseas development assistance can start to increase once again. I am also delighted that the UK and Kenya are jointly co-hosting the replenishment of the Global Partnership for Education at the end of July. I very much welcome the £430 million that the Prime Minister announced at the recent G7 towards global education. It is the single best investment we can make in the future of our planet in terms of making sure that every child gets 12 years of quality education. We all know how much that unlocks in terms of economic prosperity, a better climate and a healthier society, so that is an incredibly important thing to be doing.

Can I suggest to the Minister that, in encouraging a successful replenishment of the $5 billion that the Global Partnership for Education is seeking, we offer, as our economy grows, to match fund contributions from other donor countries around the world? I think that would be a really positive way of saying, “If you’ll put in more money, we’ll put in more money here in the UK.”

I would like to see a reversal of the 85% reduction to the United Nations Population Fund for family planning. I want every girl in the world to be able to access the same choices in family planning as we were all able to access in our lives. Of the countries around the world, one of the most alarming anecdotes I have heard about the impact of this reduction in aid spending is that in South Sudan the World Food Programme is saying it is now having to choose between feeding hungry children and feeding starving children. I would urge the Minister to put that very much at the top of his shopping list for his budget increase next year.

In conclusion, let us not argue about which poll says what. Let us have a poll in this place on this issue. Tonight’s vote is not the vote on that. Let us have a separate one.

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[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure and privilege to speak in this debate, but it is actually quite painful as well, because none of us want to see a cut in the assistance that we give to other countries that are less well-favoured than we are.

This debate covers pages 183 to 196 of a meaty document that runs to 680 pages, and we have mainly focused—and correctly so—on international development. Other elements of the document will sadly be glossed over in our enthusiasm to debate this particular issue, but it is right that we should do so.

To those who have contributed so far, who I think have all been critical of the decision to go to 0.5%, I say that we should never make the excellent the enemy of the good. We should celebrate the good that UK aid does. An important point to make is that what the Government are charged to decide upon has real-life consequences, no question about it. If that were not so, we would be wasting billions of pounds every year, and manifestly we are not. The question is: how much should we be spending on international development in the longer term? If we are arguing for a reduction of £4.5 billion for this year but we are doing £4.5 billion of good work, perhaps we should be spending more in the future, rather than less, That point has been made by only one contributor today, from the Scottish National party.

I am not advocating that, because we have to make a judgment about what is a proper amount of our national income to spend on international development. Notwithstanding all the polling data cited today, when I am uncertain I have to listen to my constituents. I did so the last time I significantly rebelled against my own party, which was in 2003, over the Iraq war, and I would do so on an issue such as this. The message I get from my constituents on this issue—perhaps they dramatically differ from those in Chesham and Amersham, but I have no way of telling—is that this is something they are relaxed about, at best, on public spending. I get it in the neck for spending on education, healthcare, law and order, and all of those issues time and again. When I say, “Where are you going to find the money?”, nine times out of 10 the response, “International development” comes back at me. I have to justify this spend, because I do believe, as a former Minister in the then Department for International Development, in what this money is able to achieve. But we have to take the public with us, which is one reason why I was pleased about the merger of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and DFID. As a joint Minister at the time, I was very pleased to see those two Departments joined up because it seemed to me that that was one way of convincing the public that the international development work this Government do also achieves foreign policy goals; I see no problem with that at all, and neither do the overwhelming majority of other countries, particularly European countries, which do not separate the two functions.

I also welcome the fact that this move is temporary. I will be supporting the Government on this, but that is conditional on this being temporary. When that pledge was made, the UK economy and the prospects were not looking very good at all. I am happy to say that they have brightened up significantly since then,

[Anthony Mangnall]

How temporary is “temporary”?

[Dr Murrison]

One year is temporary; that is the pledge that has been made. I think that is a perfectly reasonable commitment to hold Ministers to. It could be that there is something else around the corner that can be interpreted as force majeure, as set out in the International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Act 2015, but in the absence of that my belief is that this, as a temporary measure—one year—is acceptable. I do not like it—I loathe it and I accept my responsibility for some of the consequences—but it seems to me to be reasonable.

[Sarah Owen (Luton North) (Lab)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that this temporary cut will have lifelong consequences and life-ending consequences for the people we have it for?

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[Dr Murrison]

Yes, I do. Anybody who comes here thinking that somehow this is not going to have real-life consequences is delusional, and I made that point in my opening remarks. Otherwise, we would be wasting billions of pounds every year in the money that we have talked about—£4.5 billion in this case. I have never said we waste money on the good works that we do, although others take a different view for some of the fine detail. I believe it is good—it does good things, and we should be proud of and celebrate that. In supporting the Government on this measure, however, I have to accept my part of the responsibility for the fact that it will have real-life consequences.

I also welcome the Government’s focus on their seven priorities outlined in the integrated review, and I very much support its emphasis on Africa, which is absolutely right. Contained within it is an admission that going forward we cannot do everything and that as a middle-ranking country we now need to focus on what we do well. I urge Ministers to be very careful about the Daily Mail test in respect of the reputation of international development. Some legations abroad are tempted, with small pots of money available to ambassadors, to do what they think look like good projects on the ground. It is usually those projects, in my experience, that bring the whole thing into disrepute, and it is not worth the candle because it profoundly influences the views the public take of international development. It completely trashes the undoubtedly fantastic work done with the money that we allocate to international development, and it removes public support for international development, making it very difficult on the doorstep. To ensure that that does not happen, we need to take oversight.

We need to look again at the OECD straitjacket. I touched on some of this in my intervention on Lebanon. In my first-hand experience, we do great stuff on things that are not currently ODA-able, and we need to ensure that is, in some way, counted.

I praise the Government for their leadership on vaccines and COVAX, which is the issue of the moment, but I also sound a cautionary note. There is no point wheelbarrowing vaccines to countries that do not have adequate healthcare systems to deliver them. I do not want to see our vaccines simply used to vaccinate the elite in capital and regional cities. We need to be careful of that. What will the Minister do to improve those systems and the logistics behind them, perhaps using some of our very good assets such as armed forces medics and logisticians—I refer to my interest, as laid out in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests—because it seems there is a real role for them to play?

I support the comments made by the British Council. We do not do cultural imperialism, as several hon. and right hon. Members have mentioned. We get very close to it, but we do not have an Institut Français and we do not do Francophonie. We should be robust in defence of our values, as inculcated in the British Council.

I emphasise the importance of the English language, which is one of the best weapons and ambassadors we have. We do not own it. It is not exclusively our language any more, but we are its custodians, and the British Council propagates it in a way that cannot possibly fulfil the demand.

I hope very much that the loans extended to the British Council by the FCDO can become grants, which would be helpful and would enable it to do the great work it does, particularly on the English language.