Queen’s Speech

Baroness Tonge Excerpts

Tuesday 7th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tonge (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, there are so many subjects that one could talk about after this Queen’s Speech, but I will talk about some rumours and speculation which are causing much concern among the people with whom I work.

We have heard from various sources that the Department for International Development is to be absorbed by the Foreign Office. The noble Baroness, Lady Goudie, referred to something in the Daily Mail this morning saying that this was not true and was not going to happen. If it were any newspaper but the Daily Mail, I might have torn up my speech and decided to talk about something else, but I am not going to as I do not trust that newspaper.

It was suggested most graphically by the Prime Minister nearly a year ago, who alerted me when he said to the Financial Times:

“We can’t keep spending huge sums of … money as though we were some … Scandinavian NGO … The present system is leading to inevitable waste as money is shoved”—


shoved—“out of the door.” He went on to say that aid should “cohere”

“much better with UK political and … commercial objectives.”

I found that very disturbing. I dispute whether his political and commercial objectives would be less wasteful than concentrating on improving the lives of people all over the world, many of whom are seeking asylum because of our mistaken foreign policy or migrating—some here—because we have wrecked the lands on which they depend through our overconsumption of everything. This has been mentioned by many during this debate.

I remind the Government that with our exit from the European Union they want us to become a force for good in the world. The work of the Department for International Development, since it was created in 1997, when I went into the House of Commons, has hugely enhanced our reputation worldwide. If we want the soft power we hear about, it is being exerted already by that department, a point emphasised earlier by the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson.

Wherever I have been in the world in my development work since 1997, I have heard good things about the Department for International Development and the wonderful work it does—far better than any other country and possibly even better than some of those Scandinavian NGOs mentioned by the Prime Minister.

I remind the House that 25% to 30% of DfID’s budget is already being diverted to other government departments and cross-government funds with little accountability. These departments include the Foreign Office, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and the interestingly named Conflict, Stability and Security Fund. This made me smile a bit, and I wondered whether this fund would be better spent on keeping Donald Trump permanently on his golf course up in Scotland instead of allowing him to further destabilise the Middle East.

I hope that the Minister will reassure us that the Department for International Development will remain and that the commitments made by our Government to family planning and maternal health—my pet subjects—will be honoured, especially those to UNFPA, IPPF and Marie Stopes International. The World Bank has said that providing universal family planning is the single most effective intervention we can make in developing countries for their economic progress; it is the single most effective measure we can take. In particular, I hope that the £600 million pledged by the Secretary of State, Alok Sharma, at the UN Assembly last September and the pledges to prioritise funding for sexual and reproductive health made at the ICPD conference in Nairobi in November will be honoured. Can the Minister please reassure us that the great work done by previous Conservative and Labour Governments through DfID will continue, and that women and girls will remain the top priority in the development agenda?