International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) (Amendment) Bill [HL]

Baroness Sheehan Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 18th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sheehan (LD)]

My Lords, I start by adding my warm words of welcome to the Minister in taking up his new post. Before I turn to what I had planned say, I shall address some of the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, in his very wide-ranging speech, almost every word of which I did not agree with—in particular, his condemnation of giving aid to countries still practising FGM. His recommendation would condemn girls in those countries to the continuing practice; whereas engaging with the countries to change their practice would, in time, bring about the change that he says he would like to see. At this point, I pay tribute to the huge amount of work that my noble friend Lady Featherstone, who is no longer in her place, has put into alleviating this dreadful practice for the millions of girls who are subjected to it.

I also want to address the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, about Pakistanis. As a British Pakistani, I draw his attention to the fact that on the planes that flew into the World Trade towers on 9/11, there was not a single terrorist on board of Pakistani descent; rather, the vast majority were Saudi Arabians. Saudi Arabia is a country with which we do a great deal of trade in arms, yet we fail to condemn it for exporting its particularly vicious, mediaeval brand of Islam to countries such as Afghanistan and Pakistan, which are trying their utmost to deal with it.

I turn to my prepared remarks. There are people in the Middle East and parts of Africa who are on the move. They are on the move because they want the right to live in peace, freedom and human dignity. Decades of abject poverty has devastated families and communities, leading to the political unrest we have seen in recent years.

Until recently, it really was not our problem. We could tinker with the odd issue as it arose, respond to the various media frenzies and retire back into our comfortable lives until the next disaster struck. Today, it is different. Today, we have to confront these issues more directly, because they have arrived on our doorstep. A mass of people—indeed, the biggest mass movement of people in Europe since the Second World War—are desperate enough to cross a continent on foot and risk their most precious possessions to chance the Mediterranean because what they are fleeing is more terrible than what lies ahead.

This debate, brought to us by the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, is timely because it presents an opportunity to stress again the importance of developed Western nations working to alleviate poverty, and to assert again that, although it is the moral thing to do, this is not just about charity and justice, it is patently in our own interest—a point made most ably by the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson of Abinger. The problems posed by the issue of people on the move is overturning political norms at home, and we are seeing a rapidly changing political landscape, with all its inherent dangers. Surely it is cheaper and smarter to do what we can to help people where they live, so that they continue to live in their homeland—which is the option that the vast majority prefer.

In the fourth century BC, Aristotle said,

“poverty is the parent of revolution and crime”,

and it is incontrovertible that an important lever for sustained action in tackling poverty and reducing hunger is money. I am proud that it was a Liberal Democrat in the coalition Government, Michael Moore, whose Private Member’s Bill saw one of the finest moments in British history when we enshrined in law our pledge to fulfil the 1970 UN resolution to spend 0.7% of our GNI on international development. I should not forget the part played in its success by my noble friend Lord Purvis. Not only did they enable Britain to fulfil the UN resolution, but a Liberal Party manifesto pledge dating back as far as 1970 was also fulfilled.

What gives the legislation teeth is annual accountability. DfID is exemplary in the way it reports its activities openly and transparently—a lesson that other departments would do well to learn. The department’s work is widely respected across the world, so much so that international development is one of the few areas where the UK is still a global leader and reaps the huge soft power benefits that come from that.

DfID recently published its 2015-16 annual report, referred to by the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles. He took different things away from it than I did. It gives me an opportunity to cite examples of what the department has achieved on Britain’s behalf, particularly with respect to giving us value for money. Here are some examples.

On wealth creation, it supported 69.5 million people, including 36.4 million women, to gain access to financial services to help them work their way out of poverty, exceeding the target of 50 million by some margin. On poverty, vulnerability, nutrition and hunger, it reached 30 million children under five and pregnant women, of whom 12.1 million were women or girls—again, exceeding their own target of 20 million by a considerable margin. On health, DfID supported 5.6 million births with skilled birth attendants, exceeding their commitment of 2 million. On education, water sanitation and hygiene, governance and security, humanitarian assistance and supporting people to deal with the effects of climate change, DfID can be proud of its work, and I congratulate the department. It has given us real value for money.

DfID also delivers results through the multilateral organisations that it supports, such as GAVI, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, which immunised 56 million children in 2014. Then there is the Global Partnership for Education, which trained 98,000 teachers in one year, and UNICEF, which helped 10.4 million children in humanitarian situations to access basic education in 2014. I for one welcome the fact that DfID’s achievements are presented to us on an annual basis, so not only can we see for ourselves the good work that the department is doing but we can use it to persuade others to follow our lead.

There is one other point worth making—that it is important to maintain quality as well as quantity of aid. We must bear in mind that other departments will now spend an increasing proportion of the official development assistance budget, increasing by more than 25% by 2020. There are obvious risks that this presents, such as diluting the quality and potential impact of aid. However, it also represents an opportunity to get cross-Whitehall buy-in for supporting progress towards sustainable development goals and policy coherence for sustainable development. It is clear to me that, to have peace on our planet, we must eradicate poverty—and peace must be translated into food, shelter, health and education. Money well spent and annually accounted for allows us to do just that.