Official Development Assistance and the British Council

David Davis Excerpts

Wednesday 30th June 2021 Commons Chamber

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

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne). He is, as he so often is, absolutely on the nail with his speech. It is all well and good our sitting or standing here, talking about the percentage cuts here and the percentage cuts there, but we are all clear on this: these cuts will kill. In Whitehall, the savings that the Government say they will make are rounding errors in their accounts, but in Syria, Yemen, Somalia and the Sahel, these “small savings” are a matter of life and death. It is that simple.

In the horn of Africa, the epicentre of instability may be Ethiopia at the moment, but it threatens to ripple through Eritrea and Somalia into Kenya and Tanzania because the virus and locust plagues have ravaged livestock and livelihoods there—fertile ground for the terrorist organisation al-Shabaab to thrive and recruit and to revive its murderous endeavours. To the west, across the Sahel, droughts in the summer and floods in the winter have already caused conflict over resources, and in northern Nigeria, Boko Haram’s reign of terror persists.

The fact that these events are not on the evening news does not make them any less of a threat to us. The tragedies at home—covid-19 deaths, job losses, loneliness, mental health problems—may be our primary concern, but the fact that something is not happening here does not mean that it is not happening, or that it does not matter here.

In the Sahel, 270,000 people a year get life-saving medical support. That is going to be cancelled this year. In Syria, funding for the International Rescue Committee is being cut by 75%. That means that 100,000 Syrians will be without life-saving services, including health clinics to support women and children traumatised by war. In Nigeria, the International Rescue Committee will see the budget for its programmes fall from £15 million two years ago to just £2.8 million this year, which will leave women, children and disabled people who have fled the conflict with Boko Haram without life-saving support. The UN has told us that in Ethiopia, 350,000 face imminent starvation.

Let us put this in context. The four-year Bosnian war—a brutal, devastating war that saw Europe’s first genocide since world war two—left 100,000 people dead. These cuts will result in a death toll equal to or higher than that war’s. In the words of the Secretary-General of the UN, they are “a death sentence”. He is right. We have arbitrarily and unilaterally turned our back on victims of war in the middle of a global pandemic. It goes against every value that we promote as global Britain, and it is happening against the will of the British people and the British Parliament.

The Government may think that they are appealing to some populist vote on this issue, but even there they are wrong. Polling since the decision now shows that 53% of the public support foreign aid. Let us be clear: a majority of the public support the arguments that we are making today in this Chamber. The public in this country are caring, compassionate and principled, and our foreign aid policy must reflect that. It is perfectly reasonable to ask questions about how aid money is spent, whether or not we should have a fixed target and how big or small it should be, but there is a time and a place to ask those questions. Now is not the time, and this is not the way.

Listening to the debate, I thought that there was a risk for all of us. I think it is asserted that Stalin once said that a single death is a tragedy and a million deaths is a statistic. We have been standing here talking about 100,000 deaths here and 100,000 deaths there, so I will finish by drawing attention to the nature of what we are talking about. We are talking about miserable deaths for babies and children from starvation, diarrhoea and dysentery. We are talking about women dying in childbirth or shortly after. We are talking about the sort of cruelty—although it may be cruelty by neglect—that, if put in front of any ordinary constituent of ours, would draw both their compassion and their generosity. That is what we want from the Government, either today or when they come to make their proper decision on this policy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) on securing this afternoon’s debate.

Let me start by anticipating some of the things that my hon. Friend the Minister may choose to say at the end of the debate. I have no doubt that, as my excellent successor, he is extremely well briefed on some of the points that he will choose to make in response to the points that have been raised by so many colleagues this afternoon.

I first want to say, in my most understanding mode, that I understand that when we have the sharpest economic contraction for 300 years, it is necessary to review aid spending that is linked to the size of the economy. The £2.9 billion that had to be removed from the budget as a result of that economic contraction is something that I can understand. It is unfortunate, but I can understand it.

I can also understand the defence, which the Minister will no doubt put up, that there is a clause in the International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Act 2015 that says that, under extreme circumstances, the Government can come to Parliament and outline an explanation for why they did not meet 0.7% in a particular year.

I anticipate that the Minister will also point to the fact that the UK continues to spend £10 billion this year in overseas development assistance. Any one of us would accept that that is a very large amount of money, and when we are spending a large amount of money, it is always important to review it and see whether we are spending it wisely. A zero-based budget exercise, looking at every line item of expenditure, which is effectively what the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office has just gone through, is something that any prudent Government should do from time to time.

However, where I begin to depart from agreeing with what my hon. Friend is likely to say at the conclusion of the debate is around the change to 0.5%—going into a financial year and deliberately changing that percentage—without testing the will of Parliament to agree to it. That is where I think we are getting on to rather difficult legal and constitutional ground, because we all went into the last general election with a pledge to meet 0.7%. It was something that 100% of MPs were elected on. The law does state that 0.7% is what we should be aiming to achieve, apart from when there is an inadvertent inability to meet that due to economic circumstances.

I feel very passionately that those of us who are expressing concerns this afternoon are really expressing the concerns of those who are most affected, who are unable to voice their opposition. Of course, when a party breaks a manifesto pledge, it is usually voters at the next general election who are affected by it who will vote them out, but in this case, those who are most affected will, according to my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), very likely be dead by the time of the next election and not able to lobby a UK Member of Parliament.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) was saying about polling—no doubt the Minister may also allude to this—the fact is that this policy does not poll badly in the United Kingdom, because those affected are not themselves being polled and those being polled are not themselves affected.

[Mr David Davis]

There has been lots of backwards and forwards on this, but the simple truth is that the polling depends very much on the question asked. One of the effects of these cuts falls on starvation relief, drought relief and on medical support. If it is put to the public, “Do you want to give emergency aid to people starving to death?”, we get 92% in favour.

[Harriett Baldwin]

Indeed, that is an excellent point. People are very strongly in favour of vaccinating the world, and that is why I very much welcome the pledge made at the G7, which I understand will be in addition to the 0.5%. No doubt the Minister will confirm that.