Official Development Assistance

Debbie Abrahams Excerpts

Thursday 26th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

I have set out before the House how we will safeguard what we are doing on girls’ education and how we will maintain our leadership role with the global targets that we set.

We are very concerned about the position in Xinjiang. We recently made Five Eyes statements on it and brought together, in the United Nations Third Committee, a much broader pool of countries to express our concern. What needs to happen now is that the UN Human Rights Commissioner, or another independent fact-finding body, needs to be able to have access to check the facts, because China’s rejoinder is always that this is just not happening. There are too many reports that it is, we need to get to the bottom of this, and the UN Human Rights Commissioner has a role to play.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab) [V]]

The provision of overseas development aid is not a selfless act: it is in our interest to foster global peace and sustainable development, thereby reducing the migration associated with war, climate change, disease and famine. What is the Foreign Secretary’s assessment of the impact on international peace building and migration associated with the Government’s choice to cut foreign aid?

[Dominic Raab]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. I do not see a siloed distinction between our moral interest in what we do abroad and the national interest—they are often combined. In respect of some of the areas that she mentioned, she should look at what we are doing on defence and security; it may not be strictly within the DAC rules, but it does have a huge impact on our soft power abroad and the stability of the countries that she mentioned. We are going to use the allocation process to make sure that we mitigate some of the concerns and risks she mentioned, but of course we will not be able to continue all the funding that we are doing. These are difficult choices that come as a matter of necessity in the emergency financial situation that I am afraid we find ourselves in.