International Disaster Relief

Chris Law Excerpts

Tuesday 6th February 2018 Westminster Hall

[Chris Law (Dundee West) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I thank the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie) for his excellent speech, and I thank hon. Members for all the others that have been made in the debate. There is clearly a lot of consensus about the significance of the UK’s contribution to international disaster relief.

This is an important and timely debate. The world is facing the largest humanitarian crisis since 1945, with 20 million people at risk of starvation as a result of drought and conflict in South Sudan, Somalia, Yemen and Nigeria alone, according to the UN. The UK public have been among the most generous responders to emergency appeals, and they largely support action by the UK Government to respond to such disasters. However, an improved response is and will be needed to cope better with current and future humanitarian crises.

I welcome UK bilateral spending on humanitarian aid, which has steadily increased over the past seven years, and the vast majority of which has been spent on emergency response. That can only be a good thing. However, research shows that investing in disaster risk reduction prior to disasters saves life and is far more cost-effective than funding the response after a disaster has happened. It is too simplistic to assume an overarching cost-benefit ratio, but a study by the World Bank estimates that every pound spent on preparedness saves in the region of £7 in repair and recovery costs. Despite that, as has been mentioned, just 0.4% of global aid is spent on preparing for disasters. The world humanitarian summit in 2016 agreed to increase humanitarian aid spending on disaster risk reduction from 0.4% to 5%. DFID signed up to that, and I ask the Minister to provide an update on what progress has been made towards that goal. I also urge the UK Government to continue to invest in the disasters and emergencies preparedness programme beyond this year, when it is scheduled to end.

It is important to note that 90% of recorded major disasters caused by natural hazards from 1995 to 2015 were linked to weather and climate change. Fragile states have been hit hardest, and have the fewest resources to cope with climate change impacts. Even the global strategic trends programme of the Ministry of Defence acknowledges that humanitarian assistance will increase by up to 1,600% in the next 20 years, and says that that is

“in large part due to the effects of climate change”.

The current draft of the sustainable development goals highlights the fact that to achieve goal No. 1, which is to

“End poverty in all its forms everywhere”,

society needs to

“build the resilience of the poor and those in vulnerable situations and reduce their exposure and vulnerability to climate related extreme events and other economic, social and environmental disasters”.

The Government should follow the world-leading work of the Scottish Government by setting up a climate justice fund to support vulnerable countries in mitigating and adapting to the changing circumstances caused by climate change events. It would make much more sense, rather than dipping into the aid budget after such events, to acknowledge the risks and take action to reduce them before disaster strikes. There is a critical opportunity to do that now, while the political will exists, and I ask the Minister to look at that as soon as he can.

To give an example from last year, Hurricane Irma was not adequately prepared for and there was a lack of forward thinking and a slow response from the UK Government, despite indications that the hurricane would wreak devastation. Every year hurricanes cause on average $835 million of damage in the Caribbean and almost $200 million of damage in the Pacific, so the UK Government should have seen it coming. The climate challenge must therefore be integrated into national development plans and strategies. Coping with climate variability and attempting to anticipate future climate changes are no longer an optional extra but should be a policy imperative for the Government.

As well as investing in disaster risk reduction to make aid more effective, it is important to channel more funds as directly as possible through local and national actors on the ground in the affected area—we have heard a bit about that this afternoon. Such organisations know their local communities well and can respond to humanitarian crises in a quick and effective manner.

At the world humanitarian summit 2016, the biggest donors, including DFID, came together to recognise and agree the Grand Bargain. That was a series of changes to the way that donors and aid organisations work, and it aimed to get means into the hands of those in most need. Last September the UK Government recommitted to the full implementation of the Grand Bargain, but the UK response to the Rohingya crisis shows that there is a long way to go to meet those objectives. There is a lack of transparency regarding how much funding local organisations receive from the UK, and mechanisms for empowering the Rohingya with access to decision making and planning in the crisis remain limited, meaning that the response is less effective than it could be.

Only 0.2% of humanitarian funding is currently channelled to local and national actors—I think everybody in the room would say that that is woefully inadequate. NGOs support an increase to 25%, and the UK Government should also commit further funding to the Start Fund, which provides grants to small organisations in emergency situations.

Let us consider the changing focus of international aid. The UK is seen, without doubt, as a leader in shaping the global development agenda. Although aid effectiveness is difficult to measure, recent reports from the International Development Committee point out that foreign aid is—quite rightly—the most scrutinised part of UK Government spending. It is monitored by the Committee, the National Audit Office and the Independent Commission for Aid Impact, and it scores highly on the international aid transparency index. However, there has recently been an alarming shift in the strategic focus of the UK aid strategy, and growing importance is now attached to the promotion of the UK’s so-called national interest. A key mechanism for achieving that, as set out in the 2015 aid strategy, has been to direct the aid budget away from DFID to other Departments, such as the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Ministry of Defence.

Official figures show that, last year, roughly a quarter of the UK’s aid budget was spent by Government Ministries other than DFID—a rise of almost 50%. The direction of travel has raised serious concerns that that will reduce focus on global poverty alleviation, as well as concerns about the transparency and accountability of aid spending outside DFID. DFID has a commitment, enshrined in UK law, to reducing poverty, but it is not at all clear that other Departments have that same commitment. Will the Minister outline what steps DFID is taking to ensure that other Departments improve transparency and accountability in their ODA spending, and say how that will be measured? A recent report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies emphasised that position, and warned that the trend towards funnelling less aid money through DFID, combined with a growing emphasis on ensuring benefit to British firms, would have a negative impact on poverty reduction in developing countries.

After an OECD meeting in November, the Government reported that reforms to the ODA rules had been agreed. Those included doubling the percentage of contributions to UN peacekeeping missions that count as aid—such as the UK troops sent to South Sudan—from 7% to 15%. That followed agreements last year that made more security and counter-extremism spending eligible. It is our view that the foreign aid budget should never be used for defence, and this change appears to be a clear attempt to dilute the fight against poverty. We are extremely concerned about such developments driven by the UK Government.

The Secretary of State recently pledged in a Telegraph article to use Britain’s foreign aid as part of

“a bold new Brexit-ready proposition to boost trade and investment with developing countries”.

It is concerning to read that UK aid could be used to mitigate the negative impacts of Brexit, with the UK’s security and prosperity key factors in deciding how aid is spent. The reiteration that aid must be spent in the national interest was typically disappointing. I cannot emphasise enough that the delivery of aid must remain focused on ending extreme poverty and supporting a fairer, more sustainable future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

The sitting is resumed, and I believe the SNP spokesman has three minutes to go.

[Chris Law]

Thank you, Mr Hollobone. I must say that it is also a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, since I see the Chair has changed in the past few minutes.

I was coming to my conclusion, but I will reiterate the point I was making about the notion of the national interest, which is that it does not mean very much. I have to reflect on what the hon. Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd) called the moral interest, because it is in all of our interests to serve the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable internationally.

I cannot emphasise enough that the delivery of aid must remain focused on ending extreme poverty and supporting a fairer, more sustainable future for all. Although that sounds obvious, it needs to be reiterated time and again. It is in all of our interests. It is a promise we made to the world’s poorest and most vulnerable, and that is what the UK taxpayer has the right to expect.

It is also critical to ensure that all our aid is high-impact, transparent and accountable and that it delivers real change for people living in poverty, no matter which Department it comes from. That is why I urge the Minister to commit to investing more funding to resilience and recovery for those living in the fragile nations most at risk of climate-related extreme events and economic and social disasters. Lastly, I urge him to channel more funding as directly as possible through local and national actors on the ground in the affected area, working with local communities and organisations.