Oral Answers to Questions

David Davis Excerpts

Tuesday 15th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

What recent assessment he has made of the humanitarian impact of reducing the UK aid budget.

[Steven Bonnar (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (SNP)]

What assessment he has made of the potential effect of reductions in the UK aid budget on UK humanitarian work overseas.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs and First Secretary of State (Dominic Raab)]

The UK will spend £10 billion in official development assistance in 2021, making us the third highest bilateral humanitarian donor country based on the OECD data.

[Mr David Davis]

Let me start by saying that I understand full well that this is a policy imposed by an unintelligent Treasury edict. Nevertheless, it has, potentially, the fatal consequences of a medium-sized war. The Minister for the Middle East and North Africa could not tell us whether the 60% cut to Yemen meant more or less than 260,000 deaths of women and children as a result. On Ethiopia, where the UN told us that 350,000 faced imminent starvation, the Minister for Africa—the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Rochford and Southend East (James Duddridge)—yesterday could not tell the House the size of the cut in our aid. I understand from impeccable sources that we propose to cut that aid by £58 million—more than half. Can the Foreign Secretary confirm the size of that cut and tell the House what we intend to do to reduce the hundreds of thousands of deaths arising from our policy?

[Dominic Raab]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his question. I do not accept the proposition that he has put forward. As a global leader in ODA—and we continue to be a global leader in ODA—we stretch to put as much in as we possibly can. Of course, we have temporary financial exceptional circumstances, but we will get back to 0.7% as soon as we can. He raised, in particular, the issue of Yemen. We have committed at least £87 million in 2021—that is more than £1 billion since the conflict began. He asked about the firm statistics. They are sent out in the normal way through Development Tracker and the final returns that are made annually.