0.7% Official Development Assistance Target

David Davis Excerpts

Tuesday 8th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of the 0.7% official development assistance target.

I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

Mr Speaker, yesterday you made one of the strongest statements that I have heard from the Chair in more than 30 years, and you made it clear that the House should receive from the Government a meaningful vote. Naturally, in accordance with what you have said, we do not seek to divide the House on the motion today. We seek the meaningful vote that will enable the House to decide whether the Government can break our promise and arguably our law.

I see that my right hon. and hon. Friends and I are described as rebels. It is the Government who are rebelling against their clear and indisputable commitments. Who are these so-called rebels? A short perusal of yesterday’s Order Paper shows that we have among our number eight Select Committee Chairs, four distinguished former Select Committee Chairs, 16 former Ministers, 12 Privy Counsellors and four knights of the realm. From the new intake, my hon. Friends the Members for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall), for Milton Keynes North (Ben Everitt), for Bury South (Christian Wakeford), for Penrith and The Border (Dr Hudson) and for Keighley (Robbie Moore), along with others who have recently arrived in this House, have shown great courage and determination in the face of the possibility of being tarred and feathered by the Government Whips Office.

We are also supported by every former Prime Minister and, I believe, by every former leader of all four major political parties. Over the weekend, the Archbishop of Canterbury said:

“The foreign aid cut is indefensible…Let us…pray”

that it is reversed

“and that our unconscionable broken promise to the world’s poorest people is put right.”

All four distinguished current or former Chairs of the Public Accounts Committee who are in the House support our cause. My right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) describes himself as the last Thatcherite on the Government Benches.

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

Cheek!

[Mr Mitchell]

My right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) might possibly wish to disagree there. My right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough said:

“There is no public accounting justification for slashing budgets by 80% in this way. It is like telling the builder before he finishes your garden wall that you won’t pay at the end. Cancelling projects overseas is just a waste of taxpayers’ money when we should be providing long-term stability for schools, clinics and clean water projects.”

--- Later in debate ---

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

I will be brief. The arguments for the moral case that we are arguing today should be clear to anybody who has listened to the discussions of the last few days, weeks and months. The Government’s arguments on financial grounds are clearly wrong. This is a rounding error in the national accounts. The Treasury cannot forecast the economy to within £4 billion each year, so how can it account on that basis for this judgment?

I heard that the reason is political; that it is a judgment that the working class of the northern red wall seats do not like foreign aid. Well, I have defended a blue brick in that red wall for 33 years, and I can tell the House that that is wrong. The simple truth is that if we said to someone in one of those seats, “Do you want to spend money on the Ethiopian Spice Girls?” they would say that no, they would rather spend it on a local school or on cutting poverty in Barnsley or whatever it may be.

However, if we asked them the proper question—the real question—they would give us the real, British, generous answer. If we said, “Do you want to act to prevent children dying from dirty water?”, 76% would say yes. If we said the same about starvation, about the same number would say yes. If we said, “Do you want to act to prevent an emergency in a crisis?”, 92% would say yes, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) mentioned. Some 92% of all British citizens would want their money spent on that. What would they think of the 60% cut in the contribution to Yemen, the most difficult emergency in the world today? Or South Sudan? Or the Democratic Republic of Congo? Or Syria? These decisions have consequences, and they are just as smart as we are; they will see those consequences, too.

In the Sahel, 270,000 people a year get life-saving medical support, and that is going to be cancelled this year. That is interesting, because we are also sending 200 British soldiers to the Sahel to help suppress terrorism, and what will this do for that? This will be a recruiting sergeant for terrorism in the Sahel. This is actually acting against our interests and against our soldiers’ interests, and we should remember that when we are doing our accounting sums. Bear in mind that this will not just be poverty; it will be poverty that will be blamed on the west by the people acting against us in the Sahel.

The Minister claimed that the actions he has outlined are in our national interest. While in the long run doing the morally right thing is what is always in our national interest, this is not the right thing. It is the morally wrong decision for the world, and it is the practically wrong decision for our country.