International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill

Baroness D'Souza Excerpts

Friday 6th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

The noble Lord is absolutely right.

[The Lord Speaker (Baroness D'Souza)]

Amendment proposed, “Page 1, line 2, leave out the second “the” and insert “a”.

[Lord Butler of Brockwell (CB)]

My Lords, I support the amendment, the purpose of which is to remove a fixed target—“the”—and to replace a flexible target, “a”. That is the purpose of the amendment and it seems desirable.

I contribute to this debate as a former Permanent Secretary of the Treasury in charge of public expenditure, where the noble Lords, Lord Lawson and Lord MacGregor, who have put their names to the amendment, were my bosses. However, I support the amendment not out of Treasury niggardliness but because, like other noble Lords, I believe that this country has both an economic and moral interest in promoting the growth of the developing world.

However, there are good Treasury and government reasons against hypothecation of expenditure against a rigid target. The reasons are set out in the report of the Economic Affairs Committee. However, one reason that is not in the committee’s report is that at each public expenditure review departments have to come to the Treasury to make a case for the expenditure for which they are bidding. If there is a rigid amount hypothecated in this way, it relieves departments of having to make that case for expenditure. The removal of that discipline is likely to have the result that the expenditure would not be as effective as we would all like it to be. It would be a mistake to remove that discipline from DfID’s expenditure on development aid.

This is a matter for each Government to decide. There should not be a rigid amount and, therefore, I support the amendment to substitute the second “the” with the word “a”.