International Development Policies

Baroness Hodgson of Abinger Excerpts

Thursday 19th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hodgson of Abinger (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by congratulating my noble friend Lord Barker on an excellent maiden speech. He has made a significant contribution to the other House and brings to this debate his considerable experience from his role as Minister for Energy and Climate Change. We all look forward to hearing his further contributions in your Lordships’ House.

I thank the noble Earl for introducing this debate. Our international development commitments stand among the most important areas of government policy because we have a moral duty to help others around the world. We should be particularly proud that the requirement for 0.7% of GNI to be spent on international development is now enshrined in law, which sets an example to other countries. However, we need to ensure that the money is spent properly and that our funding is used to greatest effect. This means developing the right policies, with transparent, accountable review mechanisms, and ensuring that they have the desired impact on the ground. The Secretary of State for International Development, Justine Greening, has made reforms since taking the helm three years ago to strengthen internal auditing, enabling the passage of money to be followed more closely.

Without doubt, our policies have contributed enormously to the halving of extreme poverty achieved internationally under the framework of the millennium development goals, and the UK has played a leading role in developing the new sustainable development goals adopted at the UN in September, with their aspirational 17 goals and 169 targets addressing the commitment to leave no one behind and applying to all countries of the world. I was particularly heartened that the UK was instrumental in pushing for a stand-alone goal on gender equality as women are always the poorest of the poor.

There are two areas I would particularly like to raise in this debate. In the end we want all countries to become self-sustaining and thus we must encourage change within the developing countries themselves, at both national and grass-roots levels. At national levels, functioning institutions need to be in place to deliver services such as healthcare, education and justice, and British aid funds many such projects. At the grass roots the smaller organisations can generally be the most effective, gaining the trust of a community and its leaders. Many of these smaller organisations find it very difficult to obtain funding, as we have already heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, because applying for grants is so complicated. It takes expertise and they do not have the capacities. I have even heard that funds such as the Tawanmandi fund in Afghanistan, set up for just such a purpose, is very difficult and complicated to apply for.

We need to ensure that some of our money goes to these smaller organisations. However, there is a reticence over funding them because they are harder to monitor. Some of our bigger NGOs work through local partners but I met an NGO in Iraq in May this year which acted as a platform, applying for grants and managing and directing them down to a number of grass-roots organisations. Would my noble friend the Minister consider this approach to ensure that some of our aid reaches those communities where it is so badly needed?

In the longer term, as I have said, we must help developing countries to become self-sustaining. I have just returned from a visit to the DRC, a country enormously fertile and rich in natural resources but where the majority of the people live in abject poverty. Endemic corruption means that the country’s assets benefit only a few, with the proceeds being siphoned out of the country instead of benefiting the majority. The DRC is not the only country in Africa where this happens so the challenge is also how to stop it happening. Is there more that HMG could do to stop this, as much of the money coming out is brought to the West? I hope that HMG will continue to assess the most effective ways of benefiting those in developing countries and encouraging other Governments similarly to meet their aid commitments, so that together we can ensure that the SDGs will transform our world by 2030 for the benefit of all.