International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill

Christopher Chope Excerpts

Friday 5th December 2014 Commons Chamber

Consideration of Bill, as amended in the Public Bill Committee

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Is it possible to move that the Bill be referred back to Committee?

[Mr Speaker]

The hon. Gentleman is seeking to move to recommit the Bill. Under Standing Order No. 32 I have the power to select or not select such a motion. In the circumstances, I decline to select the motion.

New Clause 1

The Independent Commission for Aid Impact

“(1) The Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI) shall have responsibility to carry out independent evaluation of the relevance, impact, value-for-money, efficiency and effectiveness of the ODA in accordance with the provisions of this Act.

(2) The Schedule [The Independent Commission for Aid Impact] makes further provisions about the ICAI.”—(Mr Nuttall.)

Brought up, and read the First time.

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[Mr Nuttall]

I do not want to be drawn immediately off target. We are considering some rather detailed provisions this morning. I accept that there are different views. There are many on the Government Benches who think it would be a good thing to use some of our public money—moneys that we have taken from the taxpayer—to pay for international aid. To a large extent, I go along with that, but what the Bill does is entirely different. It tries to enshrine in statute one particular area of Government spending, which no other areas of Government spending enjoy. It could be argued that it is better for a Government to spend whatever they want, be it 0.7% or 0.8%, of their own free will, rather than being obliged by statute to do so. There is another point. There may be those who, once they see that the 0.7% target has been enshrined in statute, think the job is done.

The people of this country have a long and proud history of giving generously to charity, and long may that continue, but is not there a danger that some—although not all—might think that, because 0.7% is enshrined in statute, the Government are doing that job for them? I for one do not wish to go down that road. I would like people to feel that it is also their responsibility, as an act of charity, to contribute to international aid.

[Mr Chope]

Is not the problem with the Bill highlighted by the autumn statement? GDP is forecast to increase by more than 3%, which means more than £400 million extra will have to be spent on overseas aid next year in order to meet the target. At the same time, the Chancellor is saying that we are still in the age of austerity.

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Several newspapers have today reported that that would indeed be the effect of an after-the-event revision in gross national income. Some of the amendments that we will consider today attempt to deal with that problem.

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Essentially, that is a sunset provision.

[Mr Chope]

I have not signed new clause 7, but its heart seems to be that the Bill will have effect only in years when the UK records a budget surplus. Does my hon. Friend agree that without such a provision the Bill will require the Government to increase borrowing to fund overseas aid?

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. While we are in deficit we are undoubtedly borrowing money to pay for the overseas aid budget. There is no getting away from that. It is a fact of economic life. Some might think it a good idea to borrow money with one hand and give it away with the other; others might not take that view. It would be an interesting referendum were one to be held on that question.

In one way or another, new clause 3 and amendments 18 and 19 deal with the accounting period in the Bill. I might have missed it—I am happy to stand corrected—but nowhere in our proceedings have I seen a convincing explanation of why the accounting period by which our success in meeting the target is to be assessed is a calendar year, rather than a financial year, which we all deal in. The new clause and amendments would change the relevant accounting period from a calendar year to a financial year, bringing to the Bill much greater clarity, openness and transparency, because all the Government’s accounts are done in financial years. I cannot see why this aspect of Government expenditure should be any different. I hope that those amendments find favour with the House.

[Mr Chope]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, as drafted, the Bill will require a lot of extra expense and work? The figures are already calculated on a financial year basis, so changing the basis to a calendar year will incur additional expense.

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It makes sense for those who want to see the United Kingdom making the maximum impact with the money available for international aid, including some who have tabled amendments, to make the reporting requirements—everyone accepts we need some means of evaluation so there must be reporting requirements—as simple as possible. I cannot understand why we make them so complicated by putting them on a different basis from all the other Government accounts. It seems to me logical and common sense to assess the accounting period on the same basis as for all other annual accounts.

Amendments 21 to 26 would reduce the figure of 0.7% to 0.35%. Before anyone jumps up to say that this will mean cutting our aid in half, let me say that that is not necessarily so. This issue reveals the problem with the Bill. At the end of the day, the Government could continue to spend more than 0.35% on international aid; they could continue to spend 0.7% or even 0.8% on it if they were so minded. It is worth while considering why this figure of 0.7% has achieved almost mythical proportions.

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[Philip Davies]

I want to begin by saying how regrettable it is that the Minister and the shadow Minister have treated the House with such contempt this morning by making no attempt at all to engage with the debate. Basically, they think they have a right to just come along, stand up and sit down without offering any explanation of the Government’s position or that of the official Opposition, in an attempt to railroad through the House a Bill that has very little public support. They really should be ashamed of themselves for treating the House with such contempt today. We are no wiser about the position of the Government or the Opposition on the amendments, or about their arguments for or against them, even though they supported some of them on Second Reading and supported the money resolution passed in the House. It is unfortunate that the Minister and shadow Minister have chosen to adopt this tactic today; it does neither of them any credit. I will attempt to fill in some of the gaps that they have left unfilled today.

If you will allow me, Mr Speaker, I will go through the new clauses and amendments tabled in my name first. Then I will comment briefly on those tabled by my hon. Friends. New clause 3 deals with the relevant period for annual reporting. The international agreement, which we keep being told makes the Bill so essential, actually dates back to the mid-1970s, yet all of a sudden it has become a matter of urgency that, in 2014, we should implement something that was agreed back then. That agreement included provisions for reporting on a calendar basis, and the Bill proposes that the target should be reported and calculated on that basis. However, we do not work on that basis in this House. We have a financial year. We could end up with some unintended consequences with this legislation, whereby it tries to put into a calendar year what this House does in a financial year. The Office for Budget Responsibility, the Treasury and all Departments calculate things on a financial year basis—all departmental budgets operate on that basis. So it is just not practical to decide that one Department should be able to opt out of that framework and have its budgets determined on a calendar basis, unlike every other Department.

[Mr Chope]

Is it not worse than that, because the Bill suggests that it should start on 1 June 2015, which is the beginning of neither a calendar year, nor a budgetary year?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is right about that. I know that what he says reflects a proposal that he has put forward, with which I have much sympathy. I will discuss it a little later, if he will allow me.

What is in the Bill will mean that in a financial year in this House the Government may not be spending 0.7% of their budget on overseas aid—they may be spending more or they could be spending less. Whatever this House decides, it must treat the Department for International Development in the same way as every other Department, and a financial year should be the basis for that. I hope that the Government will reflect on this matter, because I do not know how this arrangement will work otherwise. I have no idea how they propose it will work either. It would have been helpful if the Minister had set out how it would work from a Treasury, OBR and general reporting perspective and what implications there may be. As he failed to take the opportunity to do so, we are none the wiser.

New clause 4 would set the Bill back up as it was on Second Reading, by putting in place the independent international development office. That was deemed necessary by the Bill’s proponents on Second Reading, but now, all of a sudden, it has become completely unnecessary. We have been given no explanation from anybody today as to why a few members of the Committee decided to strike it out. No doubt the shadow Minister, the Minister and the promoter of the Bill all connived to take it out, yet no explanation has been given this morning as to why they choose to do so. That is why I say that they have treated the House with contempt. We have been given no explanation of why the Committee chose to act in the way it did. My new clause has provided the opportunity for the House to revisit this matter. If it thought this body was important on Second Reading, I want to know why it is no longer important.

I worry about this situation very much. I am not one for having bureaucratic bodies set up willy-nilly, with limitless budgets, in order to empire-build for no particular purpose, but when the right hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (Michael Moore) proposed the Bill he thought that this independent international development office would have a serious purpose. That purpose was to evaluate

“the relevance, impact, value-for-money and sustainability of ODA.”

It was also to

“develop systems to verify the extent to which ODA is spent efficiently and effectively.”

We have to worry about why the Government and the official Opposition are so keen that that is no longer the case. Does that mean they do not want any body being given a remit to evaluate the relevance, impact, value for money and sustainability of overseas aid? Might it be embarrassing for the Government and for the official Opposition—if they one day hope to be in government? Their actions will not now be independently monitored by a body that commands any great confidence—that seems to be the implication of the Government and the Opposition taking this bit of the Bill out. It means that they do not want to be scrutinised on how well this money is spent—and no wonder. We have seen time and again—I gave some examples on Second Reading, which I will not rehearse again today—that money has been spent on the most ridiculous things in the name of overseas aid. These things would not command any support among the British public, but they come under the overseas aid budget. Of course what is happening here is that Ministers do not want that level of scrutiny.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) has proposed an alternative, and it may well be that it makes more sense than mine.

I am not precious about whose new clause is accepted, which body we have or whether an existing body could do the job properly. That is of no concern to me. My concern is that there is some independent evaluation and scrutiny of how the money is spent. Many people around the country feel that overseas aid is about taking money from poor people in rich countries and giving it to rich people in poor countries. They see millions of pounds siphoned off by dictators around the world for a new fleet of Mercedes, or whatever it may be. Dictators of some countries probably think that the Government should include a Mercedes catalogue with the aid that they are giving. Those are the legitimate concerns of many of my constituents and many people around the country. Those concerns will only be enhanced when they realise that the two main parties and the promoter of the Bill have removed from the Bill any attempt to ensure that the money is spent effectively, wisely, and for the good of the people it is supposed to help. We have not had any explanation as to why they have made that decision today.

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[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. You would not let me get sidetracked into discussing the definitions of benefits and how they should be paid, Mr Speaker, and I do not want to do so either, but it is worth mentioning in passing that £1 million a year of jobseeker’s allowance goes to people who live abroad. Like my hon. Friend, I am not entirely sure how they can qualify as a jobseeker, but that is a slightly incidental point.

I have the figures now for your benefit, Mr Speaker. In 2013-14, £3.6 billion of DWP money was given to people living abroad. That is a considerable amount of taxpayers’ money that benefits those countries and I do not really see why it should not count in the overseas aid budget. On all three counts, the Minister might want to explain why his Department does not think that that is the case, because he has given no indication of that at all.

New clause 5 also covers the administrative costs of the Department for International Development, its agencies and its associated public bodies. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North touched on this and I am grateful to him for his support for my new clause in that regard. I am not entirely clear where the administrative costs for DFID and its agencies stand, and if people did not rattle through their speeches so fast, we might all actually learn something. Are administrative costs counted as overseas aid or do we say that overseas aid is paid over and above them? I am not entirely clear. I am clear, however, that they should be included in the overseas aid budget because, as my hon. Friend said, that gives the best possible guarantee that the Department will cut its cloth to ensure that as much money as possible is handed over to the people who need it most rather than being spent on self-serving bureaucracy. We are none the wiser today, but perhaps that might be clarified at some point in the future.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend’s point about administrative costs is very important. Does he recall that when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister, she vetoed having the Department responsible for overseas development based in what is now Richmond house in Whitehall? She thought that that would be an ostensible gross waste of money and that money being spent on overseas aid should go to the countries in need rather than being spent on administrative costs.

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. As in virtually everything, Lady Thatcher was right about that. To be honest, it is a pity that her views do not carry more sway today because we would not find ourselves debating such a ridiculous and pointless Bill if she were still at the helm.

New clause 6 is about the calculation of gross national income, which, in many cases, is one of the most important parts of the Bill. We certainly should not gloss over this quickly because it involves the spending of a considerable amount of taxpayers’ money based on whatever happens to be the calculation at any one time.

This is very serious. The Minister is a good man normally—I have no idea what has come over him today. He should be ashamed of himself for not treating the matter with the seriousness that it deserves. He should explain the Government’s position.

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[Philip Davies]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that. I am sure everybody in the country will be pleased to know that the taxpayer has been stuffed because of the European Union—not for the first time and, no doubt, not for the last time.

The fact remains that we have a new calculation. This is not a pledge that was made in the 1970s or even when the proponents of the Bill first wanted to enshrine it in law. We are being asked to sign up to something entirely different from what we were originally told, and it will cost the British taxpayer more. If 0.7% of the old calculation was good enough, why can we not stick to that figure and that calculation? Why do we have to move to the new calculation? What evidence is there that that is necessary? What is the thinking behind it? We have had no explanation of that. Nobody has even touched on the issue. The taxpayer is expected to hand over a few extra hundreds of millions of pounds. Some in the House do not care that they are spending other people’s hard-earned money willy-nilly, but I care about people’s hard-earned money and the taxes that they pay, and I want to make sure that those are spent properly. It is just an accountancy figure to many Members, who do not care.

The GNI figure is essential. By passing the Bill unamended and without my new clause, we are at the whim of any future recalculation of GNI which requires the Government to hand over even more to hit the arbitrary 0.7% target. We should not allow that to happen. My new clause 6 would put in place safeguards for the taxpayer.

New clause 7 is also extremely important. It deals with one of the assertions from the Opposition. It provides that the Bill would take effect only after a referendum had taken place and had resulted in more than 50% of the people voting in favour of the target. I am constantly told that the target is extremely popular out in the country, that everybody wants to see it met, and that only a few reactionaries do not. I am prepared to take my case to the country and have it tested in a referendum. If more than 50% of people vote to spend all that money on overseas aid, I will be the first to accept that. I will try to make sure that the money is spent as well as possible, and I will accept the will of the people in a referendum.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. The 2012 British social attitudes survey shows that, when asked what should be the priority for extra Government expenditure, 42% of respondents said health, 30% said education and 0.5% said overseas aid.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes the point particularly well. I am pretty confident that the majority of the public are on our side on this issue. It is important to note, in relation to new clause 6 and the percentage of GNI, that the OBR’s figures, published only this week, show that spending in every Government Department—that includes spending on health, defence, schools and education—will go down as a proportion of GDP over the next five years. I suspect that the majority of my constituents would want to protect the health budget, if anything, as a proportion of GDP.

Is not it extraordinary that we are effectively being asked to rubber-stamp a provision that will ensure that although spending in every other Government Department will go down as a proportion of GDP, spending on overseas aid will remain the same as a proportion of GDP? I cannot accept that that is the will of the British public. In fact, I am not entirely sure that we will see that it is the will of the House. I have proposed that 50% of the public should have to vote for it, but I suspect that we will not get anywhere near 50% of MPs voting for it today. Let us have some democratic legitimacy for the policy. Let us have it out in a referendum. Let the people decide what they want their taxes to be spent on.

I suspect that I will be proved right and that those arguing for the Bill will be proved wrong. Of course, if they are right, they have nothing to fear from a referendum. I want to know why they fear the public’s opinion so much—we did not hear it today because they were so determined to rattle through their speeches. I think that we should put this to the people in a referendum, given that we seem to be embarking on a new constitutional settlement. In our constitution we have never gone down this route of protecting spending for one Department as a proportion of GDP. Let us see whether the British public are in favour of that new constitutional arrangement. I fear that they are not.

Of course, if the Bill is not amended today, overseas aid will become a bigger and bigger proportion of Government spending every year, because spending by every other Department will go down as a proportion of GDP. Nobody has admitted it so far, but that, in effect, is what the Bill will sign us up to. Is that really what Members think the public want, when there is so much pressure on our public services, our military and our transport system? Do they really think that they want a higher and higher proportion of Government spending to go on overseas aid? I do not think they do. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) has given us the polling, which suggests that is not the case either. I would like other Members to trust the public with their own money.

Subsection (3) of new clause 7 states:

“This Act shall only have effect in those years where the United Kingdom records a budget surplus.”

We are borrowing more than we expected this year. The Chancellor gave us the figures this week. He has done an excellent job in getting the deficit down—I am the first to praise him for that—but it is still far too high. It is about £5 billion higher than he anticipated it would be at this stage. The hon. Member for Luton South (Gavin Shuker) talked about how much money the British public give to charity. We are very generous in this country when it comes to helping those less fortunate than us. That is a proud tradition that I suspect and hope will continue. I would much prefer individuals to decide which charities to give their own money to, rather than the Government deciding what they should and should not be supporting through their taxes. That is an essential principle of mine.

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That is why new clause 7 proposes that the Act should come into effect only when the United Kingdom records a budget surplus. We would therefore be spending only money that we had and could afford to hand over to other countries. It is ludicrous that we are spending about £12 billion a year at the same time as borrowing about £91 billion a year. That cannot make sense.

[Mr Chope]

Will my hon. Friend clarify that he is not saying that there should be no expenditure on overseas aid until we have a budget surplus, but that this rigid formula should not come into effect until such a time?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I would be the first to say that when countries face some terrible humanitarian situation or natural disaster, the United Kingdom should always be at the forefront in helping them in their hour of need. However, if anybody thinks that our entire overseas aid budget goes on helping countries in their hour of need, they need to study much more closely what the budget is spent on.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I do not want to go down that cul de sac either, but it is worth noting in passing that we made a promise to spend 2% of GDP on defence, and that promise does not appear to have been legislated for anywhere. In fact, the OBR has calculated that, on current projections, it will actually drop to 1.5% by 2020. My hon. Friend makes a very good point on what is the most worthwhile thing to spend our money if we are to help other countries around the world.

[Mr Chope]

Is my hon. Friend aware that that promise is incorporated in the Defence Expenditure (NATO Target) Bill, which the Government have consistently blocked?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes his point well and I agree with it, but I will make no further comment, because we would be going off the rails if we started debating a different Bill.

Subsection (4) of new clause 7 would allow the Secretary of State to

“vary the target… by an order contained in a statutory instrument in response to the UK leaving or joining a multilateral organisation which itself disburses”

overseas aid. I think that we need more flexibility in the Bill. We might join an organisation that is giving aid to something we already give aid to, in which case it would be ridiculous to in effect doubt the money that is already being spent. We have no idea what our future international relationships will be and what these international organisations may or may not be doing. The Bill should therefore have some flexibility whereby if we join an organisation that is already doing what we are doing, we do not, in effect, end up doing it twice, and the Government can adjust the target to take account of that.

The final part of new clause 7 is a sunset clause whereby the Act would cease to exist in the fifth year of its being in force. I am a big fan of sunset clauses generally; they should be used more widely. Often when we pass legislation in this House, we guess or second-guess its implications, and then find that it has no end of unintended consequences, yet it stays there on the statute book causing problems because nobody can be bothered to get rid of it or find the parliamentary time to do so. It would be much more sensible if, as a matter of routine, we introduced sunset clauses so that we were forced as a House to assess how legislation was working and whether it needed to be tweaked. That would force people to come back either with the same proposal or a revised proposal taking into account what we had learned.

If overseas aid is doing what it should be doing, then it should not be there in perpetuity. This goes to the heart of why this Bill is completely ridiculous. We should be saying to countries around the world: “You’ve got some issues that you need help with. It’s your responsibility to sort out your own issues, but we’ll give you a helping hand. We expect you to sort out your own arrangements on the rule of law and governance and so on to enable inward investment to be encouraged. Once you’ve sorted yourself out with our helping hand, we can then walk away and leave you to stand on your own two feet.” Surely the purpose of overseas aid, if it has any purpose whatsoever, is to help countries to stand on their own two feet; it should not be there in perpetuity. Why, therefore, does this Bill enshrine this level of spending in perpetuity? Are we accepting that overseas aid does not make any difference to these countries—that they do not get any long-term benefit from it and it is just a short-term sticking plaster to make us feel better? If it is achieving anything on a longer-term basis, then surely we should not need to keep spending all this money but should instead be tapering it off.

A sunset clause is a sensible provision to allow us to assess five years hence what is an appropriate figure for us to spend in order to deal with the world as it then is. It is complete lunacy to say that we are going to spend 0.7% in future years when we have no idea of what the world’s circumstances will be—what countries will need help, and how much.

There is no doubt about why Labour Members agree to these things. They believe that people should be judged simply on how much money they spend on something—that it is all about input. That is what the Labour party is all about. I remember, years ago, asking the then Government why truancy had got worse under their stewardship. They told me that they had spent £1 billion on tackling truancy, as if that made it all right; they wanted to be judged simply on their input. I thought that the fact that they had spent £1 billion on something that had got worse was terrible, but that is because I am a Conservative. I do not doubt that Labour Members think they should be judged on how much they spend and that it is all about input. What astonishes me is that people who like to describe themselves as Conservatives think we should be judged only on how much we spend and on our input, and have no judgment made on our output whatsoever. A sunset clause would help by making us look at the output of what we had done and whether it was worth persevering with.

I have previously outlined the difficulty of basing how much money we spend on an ongoing calculation throughout a year. Under amendment 16 the 0.7% figure that we spent would be based on the final adjusted figure for gross national income in the preceding year. No guesswork would be involved—it would be the final adjusted figure that everybody accepted as such. The figure that would be spent the following year would be 0.7% of the previous year’s GNI.

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[Mr Chope]

Is it not serious that we are proposing to pass legislation that will raise public expectations, which could then be dashed in such a spectacular manner because there is no enforcement mechanism?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. This sort of thing brings this place into contempt with the public. We have to guard against that.

I agree wholeheartedly with amendments 5 and 6, which were tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset, who will be able to offer a much better explanation of their merits. He also tabled amendments 7 and 8. Amendment 7 is very good. At present, the only sanction is that the Government will have to make a statement on why they have not achieved their target

“as soon as reasonably practicable”.

When will that be? What does that mean? Will we have to wait for a report to come out a year hence? It is completely meaningless and I cannot believe that anyone has fallen for it. My hon. Friend’s amendment, which is very sensible indeed and should be welcomed by the whole House, says that the statement should be made after

“no more than 10 days during which both Houses of Parliament are sitting”.

That would genuinely hold the Government’s feet to the fire, but, of course, in their haste to get anything on the statute book, it appears that, as usually happens on a Friday, hon. Members on both sides of the House are happy to accept it, even though it is completely meaningless.

I have to say to my hon. Friend that I do not agree with amendment 8. He wants to leave out the subsections in clause 2 that give reasons for why the Government have not hit the target. I will conclude shortly, so I hope my hon. Friend will be able to offer an explanation. Perhaps I have read it wrongly, but it seems to me that there are some reasons in the Bill as drafted for why the Government may not have hit their target of 0.7%. I would like to see as many of those reasons as possible in the Bill, but my hon. Friend wants to take them out.

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[Philip Davies]

I take my hon. Friend’s point. He is usually right on most things, so I always err on the side of thinking that he is right. I am still not entirely persuaded; he may be able to have a better go in a bit. I am happy to see some reasons for why the Government may not have been able to hit their target, and I would like to see them expanded rather than taken away. My hon. Friend has some work to do to persuade me to accept amendment 8.

Amendment 9 is very good. It basically says that if the Government do not hit the target, no action needs to be taken, which seems sensible. Amendment 10 does the same thing. Amendment 11 is a hybrid amendment in some respects, because I agree with clause 2(3), but disagree with subsection (4). My hon. Friend wants to take out both subsections. As I made clear earlier, I think that subsection (3) is helpful, because it gives reasons for why the Government may not have hit their target. Subsection (4) is completely pointless, so I agree with removing it.

My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch has tabled some amendments as well. Amendment 1, which would leave out clause 3, is very sensible. It relates to the point about accountability to Parliament. It is clear that it is a meaningless clause. There is no accountability whatever for the measures in the Bill. Rather than pretending that there is, we ought to put the Bill out of its misery, be honest that there is no accountability and leave it at that.

We have discussed amendment 3, which is about the Bill coming into force on 1 January 2016. I cannot see how anyone can disagree with that—it is just common sense.

Amendment 2 is also a very good amendment. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch has a track record of tabling telling and sensible amendments, and he has struck oil again. Clause 5 states:

“The Secretary of State must make arrangements for the independent evaluation”

to show that there has been

“value for money in relation to the purposes for which it is provided.”

He wants to add that the way in which the money has been spent is

“relevant, sustainable and capable of having a measurable impact.”

I agree absolutely. Does anyone here disagree that the money should be spent in a way that is relevant, sustainable and capable of having a measurable impact? If they vote down amendment 2, they will, in effect, be saying that they do not think that it should be spent in that way. Of course it should be spent in that way. It would be helpful if the proponents of the Bill accepted that amendment as an improvement to the Bill to ensure that the money is spent as properly as possible.

The only point on which I take issue with my hon. Friend is the use of the word “sustainable”. It is one of those words that everybody bandies around, but nobody really knows what it means.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is exactly why I put the word in. I thought that it might appeal to the promoter of the Bill.

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[Mr Chope]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless). I used to enjoy listening to him when he was a compassionate Conservative and now he is a compassionate “UKIPer”. He brings a lot of wisdom to this debate. It is important that we realise that what he has just articulated is the view of not just members of the United Kingdom Independence party, but of many members of the Conservative party, including a lot of my hon. Friends who have participated in these debates. Unfortunately, this is the first contribution I have been able to make to the debate on this Bill, because I was unable to speak on Second Reading, I did not serve on the Public Bill Committee and I was not able to speak to the amendments I had tabled on Report because the Bill’s promoter moved a closure motion, which was rather undemocratic.

[Mark Reckless]

Let me ask the hon. Gentleman a question about his statement that so many Conservative Members and supporters share his and my view on these issues. Why is that view so poorly represented within the Conservative parliamentary party, and why we have had only six or so people in the No Lobby today?

[Mr Chope]

I am not sure that it is represented only by a small number of Conservative Members. We saw during these proceedings that the preponderance of people supporting the Bill were on the Opposition Benches and I suspect that a lot of Conservative Members have grave concerns about the Bill—

[Stephen Doughty]

Where are they?

[Mr Chope]

They are not here at the moment, but I cannot answer as to where they are. I do know that the Chair of the Treasury Committee, who was in the same Lobby as me in the first vote earlier today, and his Committee have produced some important work on this subject. That Committee has reached a consensus on a number of issues relating to ring-fencing overseas aid and the way a Bill such as this can distort the public expenditure decision making that should be being done by the Government.

[Mike Thornton (Eastleigh) (LD)]

When the hon. Gentleman has left this House after this debate, will he do me the great favour of reading Luke 10, chapters 25 to 37 and ask himself the question: who then is my neighbour? May I ask him to do that?

[Mr Chope]

I am sorry, but I cannot really follow that intervention. I have never resorted to biblical texts in my debates in this House—

[Mike Thornton]

Perhaps you should.

[Mr Chope]

The hon. Gentleman is entitled to his own views, but the misunderstanding at the heart of his intervention is that he probably thinks we should equate generosity in spending other people’s money with generosity in spending our own money. Those of us on my side of the argument are keen to encourage people to participate in giving aid for good causes, including causes overseas. We support, and have campaigned strongly for, encouraging tax relief for those sorts of donations. It is easy for people to say, “I want to be generous with somebody else’s money.” As the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood has just said, we are talking about being generous with money—taxpayers’ money—that we do not have but will have to borrow. We should be very careful before we put a burden on future generations.

[Mark Reckless]

As well as support for inoculations and clean water, the area of overseas aid that my party does support is emergency disaster relief, as there is a particular role for Governments and their mechanisms for working quickly. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that emergency relief is one area in which Governments can do useful work?

[Mr Chope]

Absolutely. That is one area in which the British people are traditionally incredibly generous. I am talking about humanitarian disasters such as Ebola and the ghastly happenings in Syria at the moment. The British people as individuals are prepared to put their hands in their pockets to get out their own money and to contribute to these causes. Taxpayer support is at its best when it is in the form of matched-funding, because then the taxpayers’ money follows what the people want. We get into problems when we have an administrative Department second-guessing what people think and then saying, “Let’s have a slab of money thrown here and another slab there.” That is when overseas aid falls into disrepute.

In an earlier intervention, I quoted from the 2012 British social attitudes survey. I think it is worth re-emphasising what I said. When asked what their highest priority would be for extra Government spending against a list of possible options, 41.9% of people said health, 30% said education and 0.5% said overseas aid. When asked for their next preference, 31.5% said education, 29.5% said health and 0.5% said overseas aid. The problem is that people do not want extra taxpayers’ money to be spent in this area at a time when the increases in public expenditure on health and education are not as great as those on overseas aid.

[Philip Davies]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is important for the public to know the whole truth about this Bill? As all parties have agreed that spending cuts need to take place in the next Parliament, the truth is that the more that is spent on overseas aid, the more that will need to be cut from other Departments such as health and education.

[Mr Chope]

That must be correct. If we have a pot with a declining amount of money, we may be taking out more from that pot for one particular topic—overseas aid. We know now that, as a result of the change in the GDP, we will be spending an extra £400 million next year on overseas aid, raising the total amount to £12.4 billion.

[Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

If the hon. Gentleman has any concerns about spending money that the UK does not have—indeed the UK has been in deficit since 2001—nuclear weapons, and not overseas aid, should be the target. Do he and his colleagues oppose any renewal of Trident?

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[Mr Chope]

I am very much in favour of increasing our expenditure on defence. The hon. Member for Rochester and Strood said that this Bill set an important precedent. I agree, and it is that it opens the way for my Defence Expenditure (NATO Target) Bill.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman well knows that this Bill is a narrow one. I appreciate that he is answering the point made by the hon. Gentleman, and it is perfectly reasonable for him to do so, but I am sure that he will not stray into discussing any other Bills whether in his name or that of any other Members.

[Mr Chope]

I certainly shall not do that, Madam Deputy Speaker. I wish to put it on record that there is a threat of us falling below the 2% threshold of defence expenditure as a percentage of GDP. That is a bad thing, and we should be legislating against that possibility.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

This Bill sets such a bad precedent that we should not follow it in other areas, and we should look to repeal it rather than extending the precedent right, left and centre.

[Mr Chope]

As always, there is logic in what my hon. Friend says, but, as Madam Deputy Speaker has said, I will not go down the route of making comparisons between this Bill and any other Bill that may or may not be discussed in due course. Over the coming weeks, I shall try to work out a convincing response to my hon. Friend’s intervention.

Cross-party consensus often results in rather woolly legislation. My concern, like that of my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), is that this Bill is an exercise in tokenism; it is gesture politics. It is about raising expectations beyond what is actually going to be delivered by the Bill itself. Clause 1 sets down a statutory duty. Normally, a breach of statutory duty is something against which an individual or an organisation can litigate. They can sue in the courts against the Government for being in breach of a statutory duty. Clauses 2 and 3 negate that possibility. What they say is that notwithstanding the statutory duty set out in clause 1, there is no remedy in law; the only remedy is through a report to Parliament. There is not even a requirement for a debate. The promoters and supporters of the Bill see this as a fantastic breakthrough in law-making. They believe that they now have a new statutory duty to meet a target, but when one looks at the detail of it, one sees that it is a statutory duty without any right or ability to enforce it.

When I was a law student, I was told that there was no point in having a command in law without a sanction. It seems that this Bill fails to deliver an effective sanction against a failure to fulfil the duty set out in clause 1—whether or not one supports that duty. I fear that this Bill shows that we in this House are out of touch with the wishes of the British people, and it will, in the end, disappoint in practice.

As people realise the distorting effect that this measure will have on other spending plans, hostility towards it will increase. In its report on the autumn statement of 2013, the Treasury Committee said:

“Ring-fencing, by definition, requires that the balance of public expenditure restraint and cuts be borne in the rest of public expenditure. Each successive year of public expenditure restraint results in an increase in ring-fenced spending as a proportion of the total. The smaller non-ring-fenced areas in turn have to bear a higher proportion of any savings in subsequent years. The IFS has shown that non-ring-fenced expenditure may fall from 61.6% in 2010-11 to around 50% in 2018-19 of total Departmental Expenditure Limits.”

The Committee cites as a specific example the fact that overseas development expenditure as a percentage of departmental expenditure in 2010-11 was 2.2% but it is expected to have almost doubled to 4% by 2018-19, a far higher percentage increase than in any other area of public expenditure. I do not think that fits in with the priorities of the people and I do not think that has been spelt out clearly enough, if at all, by the promoters of the Bill or by my right hon. Friend the Minister in his all-too-brief remarks on Report.

There is another important point about ring-fencing. As the Treasury Committee has said, it reduces the discipline on spending in the areas subject to it. The rigour of negotiations between the Department and the Treasury on allocations will be weakened since it is known by both sides in advance that the spending is protected. When there is ring-fenced expenditure, a departmental Minister cannot go before a Cabinet Committee and say that they need more money to spend on a programme and, when the Chief Secretary to the Treasury asks where they are going to get the money from, point out where another Department is wasting a lot of money.

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

Leaving aside the general validity or otherwise of the hon. Gentleman’s argument, does he not accept that such Bills have a positive aspect as they can encourage other countries to follow suit and ensure that they have a level of spending that means that we can work together worldwide? Is that not a good thing about a Bill and is it not a good idea?

[Mr Chope]

That takes me back to the debate we had in this House on the climate change legislation, when my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) and I, along with three other Members, voted against Third Reading. One of the arguments in favour of the Bill was that it would set a global example and everybody would follow us. What has happened is quite the opposite. We have put on our hair shirts and increased the subsidies for electricity, thereby increasing the costs to consumers, whereas the rest of the world has carried on as though nothing much has happened. I do not see any evidence of other precedents that shows that the high-minded idea of setting an example means that everyone will follow us. We have already been spending roughly 0.7% of GDP on overseas aid, as has been said earlier, and very few big countries, if any, are following our example.

[Philip Davies]

Is it not the case that since we have been increasing the amount we have been spending as a proportion of our GDP, other countries have been reducing the proportion they spend? That completely blows a hole in that argument and it looks as though other countries are leaving it to us to spend the money rather than doing it themselves.

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[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend makes a good case. This is one reason we need proper evidence-based policy making in this place. The Minister asserted earlier that the Bill would encourage others to do exactly the same and increase the proportion of GDP spent on aid, but where is the evidence of that happening? I do not think there is any evidence, and the evidence that there is seems to point in the opposite direction. If there is evidence, it will be very useful when we come to discuss the issue of the proportion of GDP we spend on defence.

I have considerable concerns about the Bill and want to close by referring to the accountability to Parliament covered in clause 3. It does not seem to me that the clause delivers anything more than a bit of hot air. All that it requires is the laying of a statement before Parliament. It does not have to be a statement to the House, by which I mean one on which questions can be asked and answers given. It merely involves a document being put in the Library. It does not seem to me that that is the sort of accountability the people promoting the Bill are talking about when they engage with their constituents. They are hyping up the Bill as though it will deliver fantastic results when all it will actually do is put unnecessary constraints on the Government.

The Bill is proposed to come into force on 1 June 2015, and it will cover the whole of the calendar year for 2015. In that respect, it offends against the principles of retrospective legislation and I hope that when it goes to the other place, as it no doubt will in due course, it will be scrutinised in a lot more detail than that with which we have been able to scrutinise it because of the limited time available.

Those of us who think the Bill is misguided and a waste of time are not against giving help to those from other countries who are less well off than ourselves. Years ago, when Lord Patten of Barnes was in charge of overseas aid and did a job not as distinguished as that done by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), somebody asked how we would stop migrants coming from north Africa. Lord Patten memorably said that we should start buying their tomatoes. Aid through trade is a lot more powerful. If the House spent more time discussing how we can improve aid through trade, the world would be a better place.