International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Act 2015

Baroness Sheehan Excerpts

Wednesday 25th November 2020 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Sheehan]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to amend the International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Act 2015.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, I cannot speculate ahead of the Chancellor’s Statement, which I believe he is currently giving in another place. The Government remain firmly committed to helping the world’s poorest people. We are always looking at how the aid budget is spent to ensure that it serves the UK’s priorities and represents value for money.

[Baroness Sheehan (LD)]

My Lords, whatever the outcome of the Chancellor’s statement, the target of 0.7% of GNI to help the world’s poorest is a proud Lib Dem achievement in coalition, spearheaded in your Lordships’ House very ably, if I may say so, by my noble friend Lord Purvis of Tweed. It serves moral, economic and political imperatives. Polling shows that it is not the British people pushing for cuts to the aid budget; it is ideologues within the governing party and a weak Prime Minister who seems unable to deny them anything.

I have two questions. First, does the Minister agree that, if there is a willingness to break international law, as set out in Part 5 of the United Kingdom Internal Market Bill, coupled with a willingness to break a manifesto pledge on international aid, this is not a good look for global Britain as a “force for good”? Secondly, how does he think that the £4 billion cut to the aid budget, scrutinised to within an inch of its life, compares to the £12 billion haemorrhaged over the last five months by the Government’s test and trace programme, which is tainted by failure and mired in fraud and corruption?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

The noble Baroness is right to pay tribute to her noble friend Lord Purvis of Tweed, who took this Bill through your Lordships’ House. She is right to say that it is a proud achievement of the coalition Government, composed of both the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives. This is an issue on which all parties have worked over many years. I believe the target was first adopted by a British Government in the year in which the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, was born—it took us a long time to reach it.

I am afraid the noble Baroness’s two questions are both hypothetical, and I cannot pre-empt what my right honourable friend the Chancellor is saying at the moment.