Official Development Assistance and the British Council

Chris Law Excerpts

Wednesday 30th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Chris Law (Dundee West) (SNP) [V]]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I thank the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) for bringing this important debate to the House. She is a colleague on the International Development Committee and I also consider her to be a friend. I have listened carefully to the debate over the course of today and the direction seems to be going in one way, which is that these cuts are abominable.

For millions of people throughout the world, the issues that we have discussed are not a matter of political debate. They are a matter of life and death. After a year of immense hardship, suffering and death in these islands and across the world, it is deplorable that this Government are selfishly intent on abandoning their responsibilities to the poorest and most vulnerable people in the world.

The world’s most comprehensive study on increased demand for aid since the pandemic revealed that 19 million more people are now in need of humanitarian aid and the gap on reaching the sustainable development goals is widening. Now is the time to be stepping up, not stepping away. Yet, unlike other nations throughout the world and against all logic, this UK Government believe that the correct response to this global crisis is to prematurely end life-saving projects with their £4 billion plus-cuts to the aid budget.

Mr Deputy Speaker, make no mistake: these cuts are a death sentence to millions of our fellow global citizens. Estimates suggest that more than a million excess child deaths alone could occur as a result. We have all been children and many of us have children—this is a truly horrifying figure and one we should all reflect upon.

It should shame the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and this Government, but as their behaviour has demonstrated since they began their assault on international development by abolishing the Department last year, they have scant regard for the facts and the consequences of their actions. They are determined to pursue this callous policy, even if that means running scared of a parliamentary vote and, of course, breaking the law.

The FCDO spending plans give barely any detail on where these cuts are falling and how spending compares to previous years. They are trying their very best to make scrutiny almost impossible and hide these cuts. Charities are still in limbo as to whether their immediate and future programmes can even go ahead. Unable to plan properly, domestic and international NGO recruitment has been paused and skilled and experienced staff are being laid off, losing decades of institutional memory. This is an appalling way to conduct Government and an unsustainable state of affairs. The NGO sector is a success story for Scotland and the UK more widely, but the UK Government are intent on trashing that. As news emerges of each project either cut or cancelled, the devastating reality of this Government’s decision becomes clearer.

Let us begin with the most basic of needs: food. Malnutrition contributes to nearly half of all deaths in children under 5 globally, and yet this Government have opted to undermine recent G7 initiatives to prevent famine and laid waste to years of UK expertise by imposing cuts to nutrition programmes—wait for it, Mr Deputy Speaker—by up to 80%.

Another obscene example of this Government’s little Britain approach to the world is that despite the past year being a stark reminder of the need to prevent disease, nearly 300 million doses of medicine for the treatment of neglected diseases in Africa are at risk of expiring and being destroyed because the FCDO has announced that it is withdrawing nearly all its funding. The UK Government could not confirm that expiring medicines will be distributed urgently, rather than destroyed, and the World Health Organisation has warned that because of these cuts 30,000 individuals are likely to die needlessly.

Furthermore, these cuts are not only needless, but they are completely incoherent. For example, there will be almost £1 billion of cuts to the UK Government’s work on preventing conflict—conflict being the very source of many of the crises happening at any one time across the world—yet in Yemen, where the world’s worst humanitarian disaster continues, we see a cut in aid of nearly three quarters compared with 2019. In addition, the Government have decided to slash aid to Syria and, for the first time since 1991, will provide no bilateral aid whatever to Iraq.

If I needed to drive the point home harder, let us return to Scotland, where COP26 will be hosted. I was shocked to learn that just weeks after the UK’s COP26 President, the right hon. Member for Reading West (Alok Sharma) visited Indonesia and called upon it to “move forward” with plans to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050, the Foreign Office cancelled with immediate effect a green growth programme designed to prevent deforestation, three years into a five-year programme. If that is not bonkers, I do not know what is.

This UK Government are fooling no one when they pretend that they have no other option but to reduce spending due to economic restraints. It was a political choice that shows exactly where their political priorities lie. Covid is affecting every single nation on Earth, and it is now that we should be pulling together through this awful pandemic.

In September, The Times reported that the Chancellor was looking to defer billions of pounds from foreign aid to pay for upgrades to British intelligence and defence capabilities. Without any attempt to disguise it, in the same month that the cut from 0.7% to 0.5% was announced, a windfall was delivered for the defence budget. Money that should have been spent on preventing famine, malnutrition and needless loss of life is now being spent on enhanced cyber-weapons. Money that should have been spent on conflict prevention is now being spent on AI-enabled drones. Money that should have been spent on protecting our planet and marginalised communities from the devastating effects of climate change is now being spent on increasing stockpiles of nuclear weapons.

Last month, the Prime Minister then confirmed that while the fiscal situation does not allow him to maintain international development spending, somehow he does deem it financially prudent to waste £200 million on a new royal yacht Britannia, despite the royal family’s displeasure. Despite my writing to the Prime Minister, he has still given no assurance that he will not try to claim that money from spending and on the backs of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable, as MPs and Ministers have previously suggested.

Despite the bluster of global Britain, the facts speak for themselves. This is a UK Government who would rather spend money on nostalgia-driven vanity projects and weapons of mass destruction than on saving human lives. This is cold, hard and brutish. During my Spirit of Independence campaign in 2014, I often argued that voting for Scottish independence was paradoxically a vote to protect what many understood as traditional British values: fairness, justice and inclusion.

As successive UK Governments have moved away from or abandoned those principles, the case for Scottish independence to protect them has only become stronger. That becomes even more apparent as the UK becomes increasingly insular and diminishes its role in the world. Indeed, in 2014, the Better Together campaign told voters in Scotland that being part of the UK ensured their place at the top table as a global leader, yet since then we have seen the UK leave the EU and break international law. Now, during a pandemic, and when every other G7 country has increased its aid contributions, they have broken their promises on international support.

While the UK Government are abruptly ending deforestation prevention projects vital to global climate change efforts, the Scottish Government are doubling their world-leading climate justice fund. While the UK Government are alone in slashing their international development spend by a third at this critical juncture for the world, the Scottish Government are working with their partners worldwide and increasing their international development fund by 50%. While the Scottish Government fulfil their role as a good global citizen, this little Britain approach of the UK Government does not even blush at the evidence that millions of lives will be lost by their incoherent, unnecessary and, frankly, callous cuts.

Finally, when the people of Scotland have the choice on their future, as they have democratically demanded in the recent Scottish election this year, I have no doubt which option they will choose.