Official Development Assistance and the British Council

Brendan O'Hara Excerpts

Wednesday 30th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Brendan O'Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP) [V]]

The decision by this Government to take essential, life-saving money away from the world’s poorest people is absolutely shameful. The fact that the Government of one of the richest countries in the world have decided arbitrarily to reduce the help that they give to the poorest and most vulnerable people on the planet, particularly in the middle of a global health pandemic, simply beggars belief. It must be the final abandonment of what little was left of the UK’s reputation for moral leadership.

The Government know, and any Member, such as the hon. Member for Rother Valley (Alexander Stafford), who intends to support these cuts should know, that this is not a consequence-free decision. Taking away more than £4 billion of life-saving aid guarantees that tens of thousands of the world’s poorest people are going to die. Everyone should also be aware of the consequences of what they are signing up to, because this is not like pulling the plug on the building of a new school. This is not putting off the construction of a new bypass because money is tight. This is not suspending the restoration of the Palace of Westminster because we can no longer justify the cost. This is a decision that will kill people. People are going to die as a direct result of this decision, and there is absolutely no running away from that reality.

This is also the ultimate betrayal of the thousands of people who work in our NGOs and our charity sector—people who strive day in and day out to alleviate suffering and to deliver food and bring comfort to the world’s most marginalised communities. At a time when charities such as the Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund, Compassion UK, the wonderful Mary’s Meals from my Argyll and Bute constituency, Oxfam, Plan International and so many others are being asked to do so much more with so much less, this is a kick in the teeth that they neither needed nor deserved.

I still find it utterly bewildering that the confirmation of slashing aid for the world’s poorest was in the integrated review of security. The idea that by making the world’s poorest people even poorer we will somehow make ourselves safer is an absolute nonsense. Are this Government really asking us to believe that the best way to make the people of the United Kingdom safer and more secure is to slash vital humanitarian aid, particularly to parts of the world that are already riven by conflict, war and famine, thereby forcing tens of millions of desperate people to uproot themselves and their families and go in search of a better, more secure future? It is a ridiculous notion, and they know that it is a ridiculous notion. But what makes this betrayal of the world’s poorest utterly grotesque is that, having announced that they were taking away billions from those poor communities, the Government announced that they are to spend it on increasing their stockpile of nuclear warheads. We all know that they will always find the cash for their weapons of mass destruction.

Some might not like it, but the country has a fundamental moral obligation to help those in what we now call the developing world, not just because we can afford to help them, which is reason enough in itself, but primarily because this country is in no small way responsible for the situation in which many now find themselves. For more than a century, the United Kingdom grew rich and powerful on the back of the world’s poor. The British empire invaded, conquered, divided and plundered half the world and very often left behind it an impoverished wasteland, so it is about time that this country woke up to the fact that it has a moral responsibility to assist those abandoned to live with the consequences of British imperialism. It should not be running away from that responsibility.

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for facilitating this debate, and I echo the point made by the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) at the start of the debate that this is not the vote that we were promised on the specific issue of the cuts to 0.7% foreign aid spending. I sincerely hope that the Government do not try to spin that it is, because we know that it is not.

We must have a vote on the cut to the foreign aid budget, because every Member of this House must have the opportunity to register his or her approval, or otherwise, of that decision. Members cannot be allowed to hide behind crocodile tears or meaningless words of regret, and no longer can they hope that, by choosing to stay silent, they will not be asked to come off the fence.

Everyone in this House must have the opportunity to go on the record and say yes or no to cutting the overseas aid budget; to say yes or no to the stark humanitarian costs of the decisions they make. When that vote does come, no one in this House will be able to pretend that they did not know or understand the consequences of their actions.

Finally, this Government love to talk about global Britain and the role that they see for the UK on the world stage. If the UK decides to cut overseas aid, we have to assume that global Britain has, in reality, become drawbridge Britain.