International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill

Debate between Caroline Spelman and Philip Davies

Friday 12th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Caroline Spelman (Meriden) (Con)]

I add my congratulations to the right hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (Michael Moore) on bringing forward this Bill. He and I served in the Cabinet that made the unanimous decision to protect spending not only on overseas aid but on health. I am proud of the fact that, when we came into government in 2010—a very difficult time for this country, when significant savings had to be made in public expenditure—there was a unanimous Cabinet decision to protect expenditure on the world’s poorest people.

I want to draw on that experience to underline the importance of the Bill. The UK is the first ever G8 country to reach the 0.7% target, joining other, smaller countries such as Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Luxembourg and the United Arab Emirates. It is significant that we are providing that leadership among the G8 countries.

I want to help some hon. Members understand the long history behind the figure of 0.7%. I have had one or two conversations this week in which hon. Members seemed to think that the 0.7% figure was plucked out of thin air; some have asked why it should not be 0.8%. Interestingly, the United Kingdom played a significant role in selecting the target. As long ago as 1958, the Churches in the United Kingdom first made the recommendation for the 0.7% target. It took until 1970 for the United Nations General Assembly to embrace the target unanimously. As a former Secretary of State who tried, successfully, to secure two United Nations agreements, which not every Member of this House has the opportunity to do, I would like to explain how difficult it is to get 193 nations to agree to do something unanimously. After all, how diverse is our world? It is significant that this unanimity exists on the development assistance agenda.

So it was that a resolution was passed that each economically advanced country would work towards 0.7% of its gross national income. It might sound like an arbitrary figure, but it is not, and it is agreed to by the United Nations. The target has seen some minor changes since it was first established, but the basic principle and the global commitment to it has remained consistent. As a 2010 OECD article states, it

“has been repeatedly re-endorsed at international conferences on aid and development down to the present day”.

It is also significant that development assistance is seen globally as something really special. There is not, for example, a United Nations agreement on what the target for expenditure on defence should be, and it is difficult to imagine that that could be achieved. There was a recent attempt to secure United Nations agreement on what percentage of GNI should be spent on health, but it has not proved possible to secure a unanimous agreement on that expenditure. I invite hon. Members to consider this: development assistance remains quite exceptional as the subject of a unanimous view of all nations on what we should seek to spend to help the world’s poorest people.

[Philip Davies]

The idea that this is not an arbitrary figure is just a load of old drivel. It started off as 0.7% of GDP and now it is 0.7% of GNI, which is completely different. In fact, the definition of GNI is going to be revised in autumn 2014, which will produce a completely new calculation altogether. Which does my right hon. Friend think it should be—current GNI, future GNI, or the original GDP?

[Mrs Spelman]

I do not believe that the figure is arbitrary. I am not a qualified statistician, but I know that gross national income is an accepted, more accurate measure of how much money a country has coming in. That is internationally accepted as well.

As we have seen, the UK is leading the way by reaching this target. That is a cause to be celebrated, which this Bill does in practical terms by enshrining it in statute. Although we have already reached the target this year, there remain strong arguments for enshrining these principles in law. First, the Bill recognises the significance of the achievements that have been made while simultaneously protecting the principles that underpin it.

Secondly, having the target in law limits the scope for political wrangling over the aid budget in future. That has a number of benefits. As Concern Worldwide has said,

“we won’t have to waste time quibbling over precisely how much to spend any more, and can instead focus on what’s really important: doing the most good with the money.”

Making a similar argument, the coalition of campaigners in the Turn Up Save Lives campaign, which focuses specifically on this Bill, has noted that

“putting our promises to the poorest beyond the day to day debates of party politics means policy-makers can focus on how we continue to improve the quality of aid, instead of having an annual debate on whether or not we intend to stick to our commitments.”

Opponents of aid targets in general sometimes argue that they are problematic because they encourage a focus on the level of aid rather than its effectiveness. That is a very important point, but focusing on the effectiveness of aid rather than its level is precisely what this Bill seeks to enable future Governments to be free to do. With the level of aid safeguarded in law, future Governments would be in a position to focus on getting value for money and using the aid in the most effective way possible. A further benefit of an aid target is that it gives a degree of predictability to the recipient countries. That enables them to plan more effectively for the long term, which, in turn, is likely to increase the effectiveness of any assistance. It encourages aid recipients to plan ahead far more effectively, which has led the poverty charity Results to comment:

“Having 0.7% fixed in legislation…means increasing the predictability of UK aid…bringing forward the day when those countries will become self-reliant”,

which is what we all want to see. The benefit is not restrictive, meaning that the aid budget is still responsive to our domestic fortunes. That is a really important point. The aid budget would be fixed at a percentage, but not at an absolute amount, allowing for adjustments in accordance with how the British economy is doing.

As the hon. Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) asserted, there is significant public support for this Bill and that must be taken into account.

[Philip Davies]

They need to get out more.

[Mrs Spelman]

I hear a challenge from beside me about where that is substantiated. For the record, according to the 2012 ComRes survey, 61% of adults supported the increases in overseas development assistance spending that enabled the Government to meet their 0.7%. Indeed, a third of those thought that 0.7% was too low. It is clear that the Bill has widespread support among the public and the third sector. The Turn Up Save Lives campaign is backed by 40 groups, including Oxfam, UNICEF, Tearfund, Christian Aid and Islamic Relief, to name but a few. I join the former Secretary of State for International Development, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), in applauding the work of those aid agencies working in some of the most difficult circumstances, particularly where their own lives are threatened, as we have seen this summer with hostage taking in centres of conflict.

Some would ask: why should we give aid at all? Some Members will undoubtedly question giving 0.7% of our GNI, but DFID’s budget for this financial year is about £13 billion, which equates to about 1.6p in every pound in the United Kingdom. According to Tearfund, of which I remind the House I am a vice-president, that figure is also less than the amount we spend on takeaway food in this country every year. It sometimes helps to bring percentages of GNI down to an incredibly practical level, so next time hon. Members order a takeaway, I ask them please to remember that our average spend on takeaways is more than we spend on overseas aid.

There is also an absolute moral argument that I do not think we can get away from. Given the recovery of our economy, there is some dispute about whether we are the world’s seventh richest nation or whether we are rising up to be the sixth richest nation. Sixth or seventh, we are among the richest nations in the world and I believe that means there is an absolute moral requirement on us to help the world’s poorest. As the Archbishop of Canterbury has said, critics of aid all too frequently

“ignore the transformative impact that aid can and does have in fragile countries struggling to meet basic human needs”.

The Turn Up Save Lives campaign points to the recent example of the civil war in Syria, where the combination of Government aid and contributions from the British public have enabled more than 1 million children to be reached with blankets and other supplies. Such figures provide a mere insight into some of the ways in which aid is having a transformative effect on people’s lives.

On a visit to Bangladesh earlier this year, I saw flood resilience that had been built through the capacity building of an aid agency, which gave me the idea that some of our own flood-affected communities at home could have done with such simple capacity building. I shall never forget visiting the huts of women in rural Bangladesh who were not able to read or write, but who, as a result of capacity building, had been taught how to generate an income for their village. As a result, they had built latrines in the village and had enough money to put solar panels on the roofs of the huts to provide internal lighting. As those women told me, with a real sense of empowerment in their eyes, “Maybe we can’t read and write, but some of our daughters are now able to go to university because they are able to study, even in the hours of darkness.”

If anybody in the House is still in doubt about the transformative nature of development assistance and about the way in which it creates not dependency but sustainability, I for one would be somewhat surprised. In the words of the former managing director of the World Bank, the current Finance Minister of Nigeria:

“Aid can be a facilitator. That is all aid can be. Aid cannot solve our problems. I’m firmly convinced about that. But it can be catalytic.”

I agree that the Bill will be a catalyst.

Food Prices and Food Poverty

Debate between Caroline Spelman and Philip Davies

Monday 23rd January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Spelman]

I am challenging the hon. Member for Wakefield to consider the fact that during her party’s 13 years in power, which saw steep rises in food prices, it introduced neither a groceries code adjudicator nor the other measures called for in the motion. Despite claiming today that the adjudicator would be some sort of panacea, the hon. Lady seems to feel that doing nothing about this for 13 years is a credible basis on which to criticise us for not having completed the process in just over 18 months.

[Philip Davies]

I must say that this is bizarre. My right hon. Friend says she is concerned about rising food prices, but she is agitating to bring in a groceries code adjudicator that, if it will have any influence at all, will only be able to put prices up further. The two things are completely contradictory.

[Mrs Spelman]

If we thought that the groceries code adjudicator would put prices up, there would not be the current cross-party support across the House for creating one.

The important point is that we need a degree of humility and candour about the Labour party’s record. As has been noted, Labour has shown extraordinary candour in the wording of its motion. We must be clear that the hon. Member for Wakefield is calling on the coalition Government to introduce the adjudicator early in the next Parliament. I am not sure whether she knows the outcome of the next election, but the motion clearly indicates that she has written off Labour’s prospects of forming the next Government—she is certainly not alone in that. It is always good to start a debate with an issue on which we can make common cause, but the good news for her is that we will not wait until the next Parliament to introduce the adjudicator.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Caroline Spelman and Philip Davies

Thursday 24th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

T6. Does the Secretary of State understand the frustration of people who hear the European Commission for ever promise to reform the common agricultural policy, and Governments of all parties promise to get it reformed, when nothing ever happens? Does she not agree that the failure to reform the CAP, which costs this country £10 billion a year, is yet another perfect example of why we would be better off out of the European Union?

[Mrs Spelman]

I perfectly understand the frustration of my hon. Friend and, in fact, farmers, who feel that we could and should get a better deal from the common agricultural policy. From the preliminary stages of the negotiations, however, I can share with him the fact that, across Europe, there is a clear consensus on lifting the regulatory burden on farmers. That augurs well for the issue being an important part of CAP reform and for my ensuring that the UK gets the best possible deal for its farmers, fishermen, consumers and taxpayers alike.