Integrated Review: Development Aid

Baroness Kennedy of Shaws Excerpts

Wednesday 28th April 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab) [V]]

I join today’s repeated expressions of total dismay. I too am sad that Lord Judd, my mentor and great friend of many years, is not here to make one of his impassioned speeches. He is a great loss.

Two questions underpin this debate. Why was there no proper evaluation of the impact of this reduction beforehand? Or was there? Can the Minister help us? No business enters into some new policy or new programme of any kind without a risk assessment. Was this not done? Secondly, why do it at all? That question was raised earlier. I am afraid that I see it as a display of rather unpleasant populist politics, with the dog-whistle message that charity begins at home. There has been no explanation to the public that the best way to create our own security in a globalised world is to prevent the blowback that comes from failing to help the poor, underdeveloped nations, riven with conflict and disease and suffering the worst effects of climate change. Conflict, poverty and persecution are why mass migration is an increasingly serious issue for the West.

This is not just about money. The UK’s expertise has led the world. DfID knew how to do development and understood that institution-building is the foundation of real change. I have seen it first hand in my own work on the rule of law. Helping draw up law to end child marriage and FGM, which has a huge impact on infant and maternal mortality; working on programmes of police and judicial training; helping to establish specialist courts to deal with gender-based violence; training prosecutors in sexual violence in conflict; working on the law on anti-corruption; developing legal systems and media freedom—all those things are done by the UK using our money in the interests of developing nations.

Development requires a package of overlapping mechanisms. That means fostering democracy, human rights and open government. This is soft power, and it works. How could we possibly think of sacrificing it? I hope the Government reconsider.