Queen’s Speech

Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead Excerpts

Thursday 17th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead]

My Lords, I think we can all agree that we have had a very interesting, wide-ranging and excellent debate across a whole range of foreign policy, defence and international aid issues. I strongly support the analysis by the noble Lord, Lord Howell, of Africa, the BRICs, South Sudan and other concerns of this House. As always, the Minister showed commitment to working to build global peace and security.

As other noble Lords have done, I pay tribute to the excellent presentation made by my noble friend Lord Wood, who gave us a compelling overview on a range of issues of concern to noble Lords. His strong and realistic analysis of the UK’s current relationship with the European Union was timely and very interesting for many of us to hear. The noble Lord, Lord Howell, my noble friend Lord Wood and other noble Lords mentioned Afghanistan, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Tonge. I trust that we will hear more from the Government today about the need to ensure that women’s voices are heard and that they are invited to join the deliberations on Afghanistan post-2014. Women in Afghanistan tell us all the time that they fear for the future and they fear that they will lose what has been achieved for women in Afghanistan, which includes women parliamentarians, some of whom visited this building this week.

A number of noble Lords raised the issue of hunger and famine in the Sahel. Urgent action needs to be taken to tackle hunger; 170 million children suffer from chronic malnutrition, which leads to physical and intellectual stunting. The noble Lord, Lord King, raised these issues. There is no shortage of food; it is a realistic ambition to feed the world.

A number of noble Lords eloquently—the word was used in particular about my noble friend Lady Blackstone—drew attention to the problems of the Palestinians, and to the wider problems in that region. The overriding message we took from those noble Lords was that peace was about securing justice. I pay tribute, too, to the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, who correctly drew attention to the need for the commitments at Busan to be honoured, and to the fact that effective monitoring was essential. As he knows, I particularly support his point about the need to do more to support parliaments in developing countries, because they are responsible for holding Governments to account and scrutinising budgets. Those important tasks fall within their remit.

The noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, again revealed his strong and informed commitment to international development, as did the noble Lords, Lord Jay, Lord Sheikh, Lord Rana and several other noble Lords. My noble friend Lord Judd shared with noble Lords his usual insights and magnificently made the case for solidarity with the world’s poor. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, drew attention to the suffering of the people of Sudan and South Sudan, and the violence and aerial bombardment that they are suffering. As the noble Baroness said, it is a humanitarian catastrophe. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, mentioned the issue of the oil pipeline that I raised today at Question Time. Noble Lords should understand that there may be a problem with what has happened, but it is not acceptable that the poor people of South Sudan are penalised for the actions of their Government, which is absolutely the case. To withdraw long-term development assistance in education and health and to fail to meet the other needs of South Sudan would be untenable.

The noble Baroness, Lady Tonge, was, albeit briefly, liberated from the naughty step. We were very thankful that she was and that she found a microphone and gave us again the benefit of hearing her, especially on the need for the world’s women to have the status and respect that they need and deserve.

I will confine my remarks to international development. The reality is that we are living in an age of unprecedented human development. We celebrate the fact that millions of people have a better, more fulfilling and healthier life than their parents did. On every continent, including Africa, precious children’s lives have been saved. More are surviving infancy and, as the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, said, more are being vaccinated against deadly diseases. More are going to school, and real progress is being made on child well-being generally, as UNICEF and Save the Children confirm. Children have so much more than their parents had. Even in Congo, Haiti and Burma, infant mortality rates are lower than they were in any country at the beginning of the last century. Those are the conclusive facts.

Those who claim that aid does not work should try telling that to mothers of children in Africa who sleep safely under antimalarial bed nets provided directly by aid—to take just one of countless examples. Every day, 485 children are saved by these nets, which are paid for with aid. That is the equivalent of 80 primary school classes a week. With those realities in mind, the argument has to be that we should do more and do better so that we succeed in underpinning what we all ultimately seek: shared prosperity and security.

The tendency has been for there to be too much focus on income levels rather than on key indicators such as health, education and the general provision of basic services. Of course we should recognise that progress has been patchy, but we must also assert that Congo and Zimbabwe are not actually the norms. That is why aid works. These “aid works” arguments must be made and we must emphasise that people’s lives are longer and better because aid enabled them to have access to income, education, social protection and better government.

On that last point, we have proof. The recent advances in Brazil, for instance, show that growth with redistribution can act as a powerful force for greater access to equity within countries. That is obviously in everyone’s interest. We know that new forms of organised violence and conflict thrive on inequalities. I want to hear the whole Government and not just DfID civil servants referring much more to the need to combat inequality within and between countries. That is especially important when people here and abroad face such terrible shocks and crises. The well-off and the elites are of course better able to weather the storm. It was ever thus.

The UK has for many years been recognised as one of the world’s most effective donors and has pushed concerns about action against poverty up the international agenda. That has rightly brought with it substantial diplomatic benefits to the UK. The international commitments that we have had for many years have, we know, brought to the UK prestige, trust and respect. That again means that it makes sense to continue to promote fairness, social justice and moral responsibility to retain our country’s reputation for practical fairness and international responsibility. It is essential to our efforts to define what Britain stands for and what Britain wants to improve—whether trade, information, protection against and prevention of security threats, including terrorism, organised crime, climate change, pandemics and the instability that affects us all when there is violent conflict.

Development also gives us a chance to tackle some of the knock-on effects of globalisation and the implications for all of us of state fragility that generates so many perils for all of us. We have to ask ourselves how we can not continue to push international development and poverty up the international agenda when it is an integral part of the UK’s overall global priorities and foreign and security policies.

At this time, most poor countries are not on target to meet their MDGs, and that must remain at the top of the UK agenda. Now the Prime Minister has a critical opportunity at the G8 and in his new role chairing the UN committee to show that he can offer real leadership by a UK Government such as we saw at the Gleneagles G8 summit in 2005. That is sorely needed now, at the G8 next year and of course as other noble Lords said at the UK-hosted G8 next year. In many ways, we are awaiting confirmation of the vital aid/GNI credential, but also a clear determination to actively leverage real change.

I said earlier that aid works and the clear evidence is that quality aid has substantially reduced aid dependency. One argument that people make against aid is that it creates aid dependency, but dependency has fallen from 47% to 27% in Ghana, for example, and from 85% in 2000 to 45% in 2010 in Rwanda. That is evidence of real transformation, and many Governments are now in the driving seat, pressing for fairer agricultural trade, combating tax evasion and climate change, promoting technology transfer, regional integration and managing migration. Those are their priorities and they are pressing them.

However, we still have work to do to justify 0.7% and the ring-fencing of development aid in the context of the so-called fiscal crisis. We have to tell the good news story, which is true and encouraging, and also point out that, after all, UK aid currently accounts for about 1p in every £1 of tax revenue. Frankly, it is nonsense to say that we cannot afford it when so much is achieved by it. Aid works and it is the smart thing to do.

The 0.7% target is arbitrary in that it is linked to specific MDG financing plans, but I would argue that the same could be said of any other area of public spending. However, we must never let up on the task of winning over public opinion and explaining how aid fits in to the wider vision of equity and fairness. Will the Government now frame a public dialogue on what aid has done and is doing and what the challenges are? It really is time for an informed debate on these issues.

It was a considerable disappointment to many of us that the gracious Speech did not contain a reference to legislation for 0.7% at any specific time. At the previous election, the Conservative manifesto said:

“We will legislate in the first session of a new Parliament to lock in this level of spending for every year from 2013”.

That was subsequently included in the text of the coalition agreement in 2010, which said:

“We will honour our commitment to spend 0.7% of GNI on overseas aid from 2013, and enshrine this commitment in law”.

Those undertakings were emphatic and explicit. However, two weeks ago I was told by the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, that the commitment would be legislated for only “when time allows”. In addition, she said that time could not be found in the last parliamentary Session because of the time that had to be given to what she described as

“reforms to tackle the fiscal deficit”.

I must say that I found that explanation rather unconvincing when the 2010-12 Parliament was actually the longest in post-war history. This Session really should be no such impediment to progress on the 0.7% Bill, and the Government must urgently seek to redeem themselves first and foremost by guaranteeing that the target is reached in 2013 and, secondly, by ensuring that legislation giving legal force to that commitment is enacted in this parliamentary year.

Let us be clear: the Bill exists. It has already had pre-legislative scrutiny from the Commons International Development Committee. It is not complex. It has a few clauses. It is short. There is agreement between the coalition parties, and they know that Labour will co-operate fully in legislation, so why do we not just get on with it?

Of course, I have heard the Government claim that the intention to reach the 0.7% figure is so strong that legislation is not really necessary. My response to that claim is to ask: if legislation is not necessary, why bother to promise it in the first place? Why was it vital to “lock in” the commitment? Why was it essential “in the first session” to “enshrine” the undertaking? The answer, as everyone knows, is that specifying the 0.7% in statute is a solemn undertaking, an expression of multiparty irreversible seriousness, and that is what we are looking for. It is as vital now as it was on the day we started to demand it. The reasons for that are clear and compelling, as noble Lords have said.

Let us stop swapping contradictory numbers, peddling gloomy aid pessimism and exchanging negative anecdotal information about aid. Like most things, aid is clearly not an unmitigated triumph, but there are remarkable successes and real progress, as we have heard, and much more prominence should be given to the plain truth. We welcome the Government’s commitment to wanting to reach the 0.7% target. Now the paramount need is to see that that commitment is fulfilled, as promised, in 2013. As we work for that, we need to ensure that the guarantee that it will be sustained in real terms is given statutory force.

Not long ago, Andrew Mitchell said:

“On the whole, politicians should do what they say they are going to do”,

and he confirmed that legislation would take the 0.7% commitment beyond doubt. I agree with him, so let us do it.