Official Development Assistance

Baroness Sugg Excerpts

Thursday 15th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sugg (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, for introducing the debate and to the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, for getting this issue on the Order Paper.

Our activities through official development assistance have given us many successes over the years and many reasons to be proud of the UK’s role in the world. In the times we find ourselves in, there are multiple areas on which we must continue to work, many of which we have heard about today. I have limited myself to two areas that I believe we must remain focused on, the first of which is malaria. I declare my interest as the chair of the board of trustees of the charity Malaria No More UK. We recently saw the seventh replenishment of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and we have heard very powerful cases made for this by the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, my noble friend Lord Herbert and the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie. I will focus on the third—malaria.

Last week, the WHO published its World Malaria Report, which showed that, tragically, 619,000 people died from malaria in 2021. Africa continues to experience 96% of those deaths, and a child still dies every minute from malaria. In just the time it will take for this debate, 180 children will die from a preventable and treatable disease. This year, we have seen some exciting innovations, many from here in the UK. Developments in vaccines and new insecticide bed nets could be real game-changers in the malaria fight. On replenishment, despite the difficult economic and political circumstances in the UK, we made a significant pledge towards the $15.7 billion raised, for which I thank our new Minister for Development, Andrew Mitchell, who is a great champion for malaria, among other things.

Like many aspects of global health, progress has stalled since the Covid-19 pandemic, but it is not too late to turn the tide and get us back on track. For us to succeed, the UK needs to play its part in investing in global health. We need a thriving R&D pipeline with enough funding to accelerate next-generation tool development; and we need to ensure increased funding to create resilient health systems, so that life-saving tools can reach the communities which need them, including through the Global Fund, GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance and our bilateral programmes. The UK has the diplomatic, scientific and financial muscle, still, that we need to get the fight back on track. I hope my noble friend the Minister can reassure me that we will continue our funding and show strong political leadership to help get us back on track.

As with many development issues, women and girls—particularly teenage girls and pregnant women—are disproportionately impacted by malaria, and they can be a key part of the solution in accelerating positive health outcomes. I believe we must look at malaria and all development issues through a gender lens—including our rugby programming, it appears.

We are living in a world of multiple crises, armed conflict, economic turmoil, the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change. All those things and their interaction impact the most vulnerable in society, particularly women and girls. We are seeing rape and other forms of sexual violence against women and girls, and we are seeing disruption to the provision of sexual and reproductive health and rights services. I support my noble friend Lady Hodgson’s Private Member’s Bill on women, peace and security, and I hope to hear more on that later.

On climate, according to yesterday’s report, the 2023 Emergency Watchlist published by the International Rescue Committee, an estimated 80% of people displaced by climate change are women and girls. The economic effects of extreme weather events can contribute to girls dropping out of school, push girls to early and forced marriage, and divert funding away from reproductive and sexual health services. All of this undermines their long-term opportunities and our hopes for truly sustainable development.

I look forward to the Government’s forthcoming women and girls strategy, and I hope my noble friend the Minister can reassure me that it will support ActionAid’s call to resource the women and girl-led organisations that provide life-saving services and help hold their Governments to account; to meaningfully partner with women and girls; and to provide long-term, flexible funding for women’s and girls’ rights organisations for their own priorities. I add to that a plea to re-establish the UK as a major player in sexual and reproductive health and rights. We know that such services lead to improvements in education, gender equality, political stability, economic development and environmental sustainability.

In my remaining time, I want to address the state of development here in the UK. I have spoken many times in this Chamber on the distressing outcomes that the cuts to UK aid have had on millions of people around the world. We have heard a lot more on that today from many noble Lords. This year, it has been exacerbated by the reported £3 billion that will be taken from the FCDO ODA budget because of the domestic costs of refugees.

Sadly, there has been very little transparency or accountability on these costs, despite my best efforts and those of many noble Lords. We find ourselves in the exceptional situation of not knowing what the FCDO budget is—and this is two weeks before the end of the ODA accounting year. That is hardly sound management of public money. Can my noble friend the Minister shed any light on how much of these domestic costs will be charged to ODA this year, in two weeks’ time? If not, will he commit to writing to me with an estimate?

Sadly, this is the latest in successive rounds of cuts that have been exacerbated by the merger between the FCO and DfID into the FCDO. Despite reassurances at the time, development has not been at the heart of this new department. I agree with my noble friend Lord Hannan that international development must be done well, not badly, but the merger has not helped this, and nor has it helped on accountability or evaluation.

It is not just the impact of these cuts but the way they have been done. A few weeks ago, at an international conference, I shared a panel with an African parliamentarian. She publicly criticised our actions, explaining how they were told that funding to provide women with contraception would be stopped, immediately, leaving them no time to find alternative resources. These are our partners and our allies who we have let down. As we heard from the right reverend Prelate, it impacts not only on our international development reputation and relationships with these partners but on our trading relationships, security partnerships and political relationships. This is at a time when we are seeing other actors leverage their investments and relationships for political gain. It is something I regret to see. I hope we can rebuild our relationships with our partners to ensure that they support us in our international aims and that we do the same.

I will end on a positive note. All is not lost; we have the opportunity to recover our international standing. I commend to noble Lords, the FCDO and the Treasury a recent article by Ranil Dissanayake and Stefan Dercon for the Center for Global Development, which sets out clearly the challenges and offers some effective solutions. It calls on us to articulate a vision and strategy for UK development policy, to establish controls to promote strategic and effective spending, and to rebuild and reverse the loss of development and expertise from the FCDO.

I am grateful that the Government once again have a seat for development at the Cabinet table, and that we have such a champion for development in Andrew Mitchell. With his work, and with political will from the Foreign Secretary, Chancellor and Prime Minister, we can take measures to ensure that our activity overseas through official development assistance gives us reason to be proud of our role in the world.