Conflict in Sudan

David Taylor Excerpts

Wednesday 5th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Falconer]

I take note of the hon. Gentleman’s suggestions. I am sure that he will be aware that six months ago, we did host a conference—I think it was in Lancaster House—for the whole world, in order to try to make progress on this question. We did so mostly privately, given the sensitivities for all involved. We will continue to do all we can diplomatically, both publicly at the UN and behind closed doors, as part of a concerted effort to bring this violence to an end.

[David Taylor (Hemel Hempstead) (Lab)]

I associate myself with the remarks made by my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (John Slinger) yesterday. He noted that in previous conflicts, concerted efforts had been made to bring in some form of UN peacekeeping force, but unfortunately, that does not seem very popular in today’s world. I will forgive the Minister if he thinks this is a naive question, but in addition to the humanitarian aid we are providing and the diplomacy we are undertaking, what can we do to stop civilians from being killed right now? Are we looking at any form of peacekeeping force, be it UN, African Union or a coalition of the willing, to stop civilians being killed right now?

[Mr Falconer]

My hon. Friend asks the right set of questions. Of course, the first priority must be a ceasefire. As he knows, there have been peacekeeping forces in Darfur previously, and they have faced very considerable difficulties in exercising their mandate when the conflict parties are not prepared to take the vital first step, which is to hold a ceasefire.

Official Development Assistance Reductions

David Taylor Excerpts

Tuesday 4th November 2025 Westminster Hall

[Seema Malhotra]

I will go through how we will take some of the priorities forward and some of the changes that we are seeing through our strategy. I hope that helps answer my hon. Friend’s question. I want to make a point about our investment in Gavi, of which we were a founding member under the last Labour Government. It has generated £250 billion in economic benefits through reduced death and disability. It is a partnership based on the UK’s world-leading expertise in not just funding but research.

From grants to expertise, that partnership comes up in conversations that I have with countries that I work with as Minister with responsibility for the Indo-Pacific. It is important in terms of how we are working to increase the expertise of partners, including the Bank of England, the City of London and the University of Cambridge. We are helping to train financial regulators across countries, and His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs’ partnership with the Ghana Revenue Authority used the UK’s expertise to increase Ghana’s tax revenue collection by £100 million last year—revenues that will help fund Ghana’s transition from aid.

I am conscious of time, but I will make a few further remarks. Reducing the overall size of our ODA budget will necessarily have an impact on the scale and shape of the work that we do. But we are sharpening our focus on three priorities, which match partner needs and the long-term needs of people in the UK, and are also in areas where we can drive real change. These priorities have been highlighted in this debate—humanitarian, health, and climate and nature—and they are underpinned by economic development. They will help maximise our impact and focus our efforts where they matter most.

I reassure the House that the UK will continue to play a key humanitarian role, including responding to the most significant conflicts of our era, in Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan. We will not let Sudan be forgotten. We are the third-largest bilateral humanitarian donor to Sudan, and in April we announced £120 million to deliver lifesaving services to over 650,000 people affected by the conflict.

[David Taylor (Hemel Hempstead) (Lab)]

On that point, will the Minister give way?

Middle East

David Taylor Excerpts

Monday 23rd June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lammy]

The hon. Gentleman is a bright man. He knows that once a country has acquired the means to enrich to 60%, the expertise exists, and only a diplomatic solution can create the framework to eradicate and control that expertise. That is why, in the end, this can be dealt with only diplomatically. It is also why President Trump is urging Iran to return to the negotiating table.

[David Taylor (Hemel Hempstead) (Lab)]

As well as the Iranian regime’s threat to Israel, it has supported Assad to kill half a million people in Syria, including Palestinians, and it supplies Putin with the drones he is using to massacre people in Ukraine. We must also remember that the Iranian regime persecutes its own people, including human rights activists. Just as Ministers have, I am pleased to say, engaged with Syrian activists in the UK to hear their views on the future of their country, can I ask Ministers and the Foreign Secretary to assure me that they will engage with human rights activists and democracy activists here in Britain to help to guide their approach?

[Mr Lammy]

My hon. Friend’s articulacy is spot on. I can give him that undertaking, between myself and the Minister for the Middle East.

USAID Funding Pause

David Taylor Excerpts

Tuesday 10th June 2025 Westminster Hall

[David Taylor (Hemel Hempstead) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Hobhouse. I thank the hon. Member for Melksham and Devizes (Brian Mathew) for securing the debate. The International Development Committee is due in a couple of weeks—if our visas are approved—to go to the US and have some of these discussions. It will be interesting to see what is said. I do not know whether I need to declare this as an interest, but I am the Labour party representative on the Progressive Alliance; our sister party is the Democratic party, and I campaigned for it in the 2012 election. I think it is obvious that my view is that we should not have the current US Administration, and their decision to slash the US aid budget was profound and devastating.

Turning to the UK context, as someone who has spent their entire career in the charity sector, I was heartbroken by the decision to cut aid to 0.3%, but it is important for the record to lay out some of the context for that decision. We inherited a horrific economy, the majority of the aid budget—a huge amount of that money—was going on asylum spend in hotels, and we faced a world in which Ukraine had been invaded by Putin and his forces. While I regret the decision to cut aid, it was taken in that terrible context, and because of the vital need to increase defence spending to 2.5%.

Why was the economy in such a state? It was because of the devastating Truss mini-Budget. Aid had already been reduced to 0.5% because of the decision that Sunak had taken, and Boris Johnson had abolished a world-leading Government Department. In addition, why did Russia invade? It was because—I should say that I do not mean this as a criticism of the last Government—the west collectively failed to stand up to Putin. We allowed him and Assad to do what they wanted in Syria; we took no action when Assad unleashed chemical weapons on his own people. Putin invaded Crimea with near impunity in 2014, and of course we had attacks on UK soil, including the chemical weapons attack in Salisbury.

[Mike Martin (Tunbridge Wells) (LD)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[David Taylor]

I will not, because I want to make a point; I find the moralising tone of my hon. Friend the Member for Alloa and Grangemouth (Brian Leishman) a bit much. The reason the last Government were able to do what they did—slashing the aid budget, abolishing the Department for International Development and wrecking the economy—was that we have never had a weaker Opposition than we did when the hard left was sadly in charge of my party. Putin was emboldened, in part, by the hard left’s constant appeasement and apologism for the things he was doing, their downplaying of the use of chemical weapons in Syria and their suggestion that we send the sample from Salisbury back to Putin to test whether or not he was responsible.

[Brian Leishman]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[David Taylor]

No, I will not, because I find the moralising tone completely infuriating. Having put that on record, I turn to the matter at hand: the horrible situation that we are in. I note with respect that other hon. Members have mentioned causes that they deeply care about, and I care about those causes—

[Mike Martin]

On geopolitics, will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[David Taylor]

I will.

[Mike Martin]

If we put aside the internecine warfare of the Labour party, the hon. Gentleman is making an interesting point about a retreat from the world. Retreating from the world as the west, the UK or the US, opens the door to creating more problems, and then we retreat further. Would he argue that that is what we are doing—vacating the field to our opponents?

[David Taylor]

I do not believe that is the case, because I believe the Minister is going to set out the ways in which we are still taking our place on the world stage, but I hear the hon. Member’s concern.

Hon. Members in this Chamber have passionately advocated for causes that they care deeply about. I respect that, especially the hon. Member for Melksham and Devizes and his passionate plea for WASH. I could talk about a number of causes important to me, but what is most important is that we increase the size of the pie. For that reason, I have been working constructively with other Members of the House to put suggestions to the Government for how, given the decision to cut aid to 0.3%, we could look at other forms of development finance.

In the interests of time, I will not go over the points that my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Alice Macdonald) made about asylum seekers, remittances, special drawing rights, the exchange equalisation account and debt relief, but I will add to that list the need to release the Chelsea money as soon as possible. The Government announced recently that they are looking to take further action against Roman Abramovich. If that money is released into Ukraine, given that we have essentially said that we will protect aid spending in Ukraine, I hope that additional money can replace official development assistance going in, so that that ODA money can then support programmes in other countries.

We also have an issue with British International Investment. To be clear, BII does good things, but there is no need for additional capitalisation out of the 0.3% that we have, given that investments in assets can be realised. Finally, I highlight the international finance facility for immunisation, which is a way to leverage extra funding. We are urging the Government to look at other ways to do that in other contexts. There is already an international finance facility for education, and by using such facilities we can leverage funds times 10. Given the various summits that are coming up, including the financing for development conference that my hon. Friend mentioned, I urge the Government to look at those options, and to think innovatively about the additional finance that we can leverage to help to support the poorest people in the world.

--- Later in debate ---

[Catherine West]

I think the hon. Lady may have a good debating point in this Chamber, but the result of the 2015 election says it all.

[David Taylor]

I want to add to what the Minister is saying. The point is that, yes, the coalition Government did protect the aid budget, but by cutting public services in this country to the core, they undermined public trust in Government. That meant that lots of people faced need, and it led to increasing calls of, “Charity begins at home; why are we spending this money abroad?” If we had kept the settlement that we had under the last Labour Government, whereby we invested in public services at home and abroad, we would not have ended up in this mess.

[Catherine West]

I think we are all making the important point that since the 2008 global crash, our economy has never really been the same and we have struggled to make progress, whether on wages and living conditions at home or on completely fulfilling our responsibilities abroad. As one says, we are where we are. General reductions in public spending are part of a broader set of pressures facing the international development system.

Support for multilateralism has been wavering for some time, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (David Taylor) said, amid shifting geopolitical priorities. Many of our partners feel that the current system no longer responds to their needs. The combined impact of these two factors is significant, and let me briefly expand on them.

First, on the disbanding of USAID, it is inevitable that significant cuts will have lasting implications for how we tackle global development challenges. I cannot say how pleased I am that the International Development Committee will go to the USA to have face-to-face dialogue with friends about how we can save the most important elements of our programmes. Given the knowledge base of the right hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell), who is well known for his work on global health, HIV/AIDS, Gavi, Unitaid and the Global Fund, he will be able to make pertinent arguments with friends there. I would also ask the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), with his connections in the faith sector, to impress on all the different faith-based charities the need to continue their important work where they can and to have many people doubling their tithe.

Gavi and the Global Fund

David Taylor Excerpts

Thursday 15th May 2025 Westminster Hall

[Wendy Morton]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and I recall that during the last replenishment, there were many conversations going on to encourage other countries and partners to step up to the plate. The UK’s leadership had a real impact at that time. In a similar vein, what is the potential impact on other countries’ pledges? Is the Minister thinking about making a reduced commitment or no pledge at all? Rather than ongoing uncertainty, it would help other donors and NGOs to know what the UK is doing, so that they can plan.

The Minister will be aware that there is a range of financial instruments available to him. One is the international finance facility for immunisation, through which £590 million of our £1.65 billion pledge in 2020 was distributed. IFFIm accelerates the delivery of vaccines by making the money from long-term Government donor pledges available immediately, allowing Gavi to vaccinate more individuals, faster. I would be grateful if the Minister updated us on any discussions he has had with Gavi and with IFFIm about its potential use to front-load any UK commitments.

[David Taylor (Hemel Hempstead) (Lab)]

I agree what a good model that is. Does the right hon. Member agree it is a model the Government could consider using for other things? An international finance facility for education has been released in the last few years. Does she agree that the Government could consider adopting this model across a range of different issues as we look to find alternative methods of development finance?

[Wendy Morton]

That is a really interesting point, because IFFIm has proved what can be achieved by working with other instruments. I hope that the Government will examine the options. The Minister may be able to share that information; it is not for me to say what the Government should do, but perhaps the Minister can do so in his response to the debate.

The global landscape of development is changing; we can see that across the rest of the world. For example, the US, which for so long has been an important anchor donor to a number of global health initiatives, has made dramatic reductions to USAID, so it would be helpful to know what discussions the Minister has had with his US counterparts and with other donor countries about co-ordinating our efforts, so we can maximise value for money in global health spend.

I will conclude as I started, by saying that global health is everybody’s health. I pay enormous tribute to the Global Fund and Gavi, which harness the power of donations from taxpayers in countries like the UK to end preventable deaths from treatable diseases in some of the most vulnerable parts of the world. Global health may sometimes seem like an abstract concept, but we only have to look back at recent history to see that infectious diseases do not respect borders and that global solutions are needed to keep us all safe.

Syria

David Taylor Excerpts

Monday 10th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Falconer]

I can tell the right hon. Gentleman, and my constituency neighbour, that we do, of course, call on the interim Administration to ensure the full representation of every one of the minorities in Syria—Christians, Druze, Kurds, Alawites and many others.

[David Taylor (Hemel Hempstead) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for his statement and thank the Government for the support they have given to the people of Syria. The terrible events of this weekend bring home the vital importance of an inclusive process for all people in Syria. I am aware of the Minister’s response to a previous question about our diplomatic presence in Syria, but are the Government also looking at ways we can increase our engagement with civil society in Syria? It is not just the Administration with which it is important to engage, but civil society. Civil society groups want to carry out a number of peaceful initiatives to build a more inclusive society, but they are struggling to get governmental and non-governmental funding and to have the right conversations. Is that something the UK Government could look at, as we build a more peaceful and inclusive society in Syria?

[Mr Falconer]

My hon. Friend has worked on these issues for many years, and he is right about the vital role of civil society. I was pleased to meet Syrian civil society organisations with him, and indeed separately. I am pleased to confirm to the House that we have been talking to a range of Syrians in Syria, including Alawites, after the events of the weekend.

Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office

David Taylor Excerpts

Wednesday 5th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[David Taylor (Hemel Hempstead) (Lab)]

I will start, as many Members have, by recognising the urgent need to increase defence spending. Over recess, I went to Ukraine for a week—it is an existential crisis. If Ukraine falls, I am convinced that the Baltic states will be in Putin’s line of sight too. Like others in this House, I am obviously extremely pained by the decision to partly get there by cutting aid to 0.3%.

Members will know that I spent my career prior to coming to this House in international development. I set up the Labour Campaign for International Development and had the privilege of working for former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who did such great things to lead on the world stage in this area when he was Prime Minister and Chancellor. I want to offer my expertise to the Government to find a way through this. I recognise that, across the House, and particularly on the Labour Benches, there are other Members who, like me, have expertise in development, and we offer ourselves to the Government to find ways to make the best of this bad situation.

The first point that I want to make is about front-loading multilateral commitments into 2026. We know that the ODA budget will go down to 0.3% of gross national income from 2027. We believe that by front-loading some of our multilateral commitments—to the Global Fund, for example—we can get round the cliff edge and help the largest number of people for the longest possible time. I know that there have already been discussions about the budget potentially going down in 2026. I urge the Government to look at other options so that we can keep aid spending at 0.5% for as long as possible.

My second point refers to the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) about asylum costs. We strongly urge the Government to consider those costs and to reduce as quickly as possible the amount being spent in the UK. Every penny spent in the UK is not being spent helping the most vulnerable. To deliver that, the Government could formally budget for and commit to project reductions in in-donor refugee costs, with any overspends funded from outside the aid budget and any underspends provided to the FCDO as additional ODA resources.

My third point, which I will not talk about for long because I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington and Bayswater (Joe Powell) has done a lot of advocacy on it, relates to the £2.5 billion of Chelsea FC money. The sooner we can get it into Ukraine and humanitarian aid the better, because it should, in theory, free up ODA money for other situations around the world.

My final point is that we now must focus time and effort on alternative forms of ODA spending. My right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North (Liam Byrne), particularly in his role as chair of the MP group on the World Bank, has some fantastic ideas about how we might be able to use things such as special drawing rights. I know that other colleagues are working on debt relief, which could offer alternative sorts of development financing.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds Central and Headingley) (Lab/Co-op)]

On alternatives, does my hon. Friend agree that it sometimes creates a false dichotomy to separate defence and ODA? In a human security approach, when there are crises such as conflict, famine or pandemics, we can utilise our forces to go in and deliver aid, as well as utilising traditional ODA.

[David Taylor]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting point, which I hope he will get to make in more detail in due course. In the time available to me, I will carry on with a few other suggestions.

Another suggestion relates to British International Investment. I am not here to criticise the work that it is doing, but the point of ODA is first and foremost to help people in extreme poverty. Although admittedly it has improved, BII has a track record over the years of not necessarily focusing on the very poorest in society. For that reason, I think the Government should look at ways of making BII capitalisations additional to the 0.3%.

[Mr Mitchell]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[David Taylor]

I will not, if the right hon. Gentleman does not mind.

The justification for that could be that the BII makes capital investments, which are ultimately an asset on the Government’s balance sheet, and that finance does not count towards the Government’s budget deficit. That could be one way of justifying such a measure without going against the Government’s fiscal rules.

I have only 30 seconds left, so I will end where I started. Other Members have made points about how aid is in our national interest, and they are right to say so. For me, it has always been about how we can ultimately benefit other human beings. Where we are born is an accident; I am privileged to live in what I consider to be the best country in the world, but many are not. We must do everything we can to support the most vulnerable.

Oral Answers to Questions

David Taylor Excerpts

Tuesday 14th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lammy]

The right hon. Lady raises an important issue. We will judge the new Syrian Government by their actions, not their words. We are, alongside allies, reviewing sanctions at the moment. I will not comment in detail on that, but we are clear that we want to see an inclusive Government who prosper. We have been pleased with what we have seen so far, but as has already been mentioned, some of what we have seen on the ground has not been good. We will judge them by their actions, not their words, and we will not go faster than she would expect us to.

[David Taylor (Hemel Hempstead) (Lab)]

T4. To follow up on the previous question, I am grateful to the Minister for coming to the event that I hosted for the Syrian diaspora yesterday. He will know that they are very keen to support their homeland to rebuild. Will Ministers look at ways to change the sanctions to ensure that ordinary citizens can send back remittances to help rebuild crumbling public services?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Mr Hamish Falconer)]

I thank my hon. Friend for the question and for his long-standing work on Syria issues. I was very glad to join him and so many inspiring members of Syrian civil society who are keen to make a contribution. We will do what we can to enable the new Syria to be a success and to enable Syrian civil society here and across the world to play their full role in that.

Syria

David Taylor Excerpts

Monday 9th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lammy]

The right hon. Gentleman is right to mention the importance of the UN, and resolution 2254 is particularly relevant to Syria. If he reviews that resolution, he will see that it largely assumes that the Assad regime is in place, so it is important to support the UN special representative at this time. If Syria is to succeed, there must be a greater role for the UN, and I intend to discuss these issues with the Secretary-General and others in the coming days and weeks.

[David Taylor (Hemel Hempstead) (Lab)]

I share the delight of my Syrian friends that Assad has gone. I only wish that the world had acted to support the Syrian people sooner, and that our dear friend Jo Cox was around to see this. I pay tribute to the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Lincoln (Mr Falconer), for meeting the Syrian British Consortium in Doha over the weekend, and I look forward to a further meeting with him and the group in due course.

Despite the denial and downplaying of Assad’s crimes over the years, including by some Members of this House, it is undeniable that hundreds of thousands of people have been imprisoned by Assad, including in Saydnaya prison. There is an urgent need to release those prisoners. Some of them are several storeys down, and there are reports on the ground that people are unable to free them at the moment, such are the electronic locks that have been put on the gates. The White Helmets are on the ground, trying to unlock the gates so that people can be freed, but there is a real worry that they will not get to them in time, and that people will starve, or even run out of oxygen. What can the British Government and the international community do to ensure that, in the next 24 hours, more is done to get technical support on the ground, so that we can unlock the doors and free the political prisoners?

[Mr Lammy]

My hon. Friend raises a really important issue. So grim was the Assad regime that I saw a young child—a toddler, effectively—walking out of a prison. This issue has commanded a lot of attention in the last few hours. We will continue to support civil society and public services as best we can in getting individuals out, but he will recognise that that is against a backdrop of some constraints. We do not have a diplomatic presence in Syria—we have not had one for a very long time. He mentions prisoners; we should never forget the 100,000 or more people who have simply disappeared. We hope and pray that many of those people will come out from underground.

North-West Syria

David Taylor Excerpts

Monday 2nd December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Hamish Falconer]

The Syrian Democratic Forces are a member of the global coalition against Daesh, and they play an important role. We engage with them regularly—both the SDF themselves and the democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria—and we will continue to do so.

[David Taylor (Hemel Hempstead) (Lab)]

I welcome the Minister’s statement and particularly the emphasis on protecting civilians. I associate myself with the remarks of my hon. Friends the Members for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) and for East Renfrewshire (Blair McDougall) in paying tribute to Jo. I am convinced that if she was still with us, British policy on Syria would have been markedly better than it unfortunately has been over the past few years.

A particular concern over that time is that debates in this Chamber and beyond have not had Syrian voices. I was grateful to hear that the Minister, and the International Development Committee, will meet the White Helmets, which is fantastic. Would he also agree to meet me and the Syrian British Consortium—a group of Syrian activists in the UK—to discuss our policy towards Syria and how their voices can shape the debate going forward?

[Hamish Falconer]

Yes.