Foreign Aid Expenditure

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Monday 13th June 2016 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Timms]

I would welcome that, as I welcome the broad support across the Chamber for that commitment. It is interesting to reflect on the reasons for that cross-party support for the 0.7% target, which I think go back to the Jubilee 2000 campaign in the run-up to the millennium, and the tremendous public support for Britain being more generous to the poorest countries in the world. That was then renewed and strengthened by the Make Poverty History campaign in 2005—the great rally in Edinburgh addressed by Nelson Mandela, with the summit at Gleneagles, chaired by Tony Blair, whose decisions made an important contribution.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that a lot of respect has to be paid to the role of the Churches in driving Jubilee 2000? The role of the Churches demonstrates that this matter is not party political, but something that speaks to the good instincts of the British people.

[Stephen Timms]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about that. During those campaigns, I remember that a Treasury Minister turned up to work one morning to find the Treasury surrounded by campaigners, arm in arm all the way around the building. They inundated the Treasury with postcards with £1 coins sellotaped to the back of them, one of which we worked out had been sent in by Gordon Brown’s mother. The organisers of the two campaigns—Jubilee 2000 and Make Poverty History—estimated that about 80% of the people who supported the campaigns and did those things were from the Churches. That is the reason for this cross-party consensus. It is a remarkable example. People sometimes say that the Churches never achieve much anymore; in this instance, the Churches achieved a huge amount, and it is important to recognise the source and strength of the existing consensus.

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[Mike Gapes (in the Chair)]

Order. The sitting is resumed and the debate may continue until 7.54 pm. I call Diane Abbott.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) on introducing this important debate.

I emphasise that it is possible passionately to support our commitment to spend 0.7% of GDP on aid and yet feel very strongly about accountability and transparency, as I do. It is not only a question of the accountability and transparency of the Department for International Development, although I appreciate that it is doing a lot of work on that. It is about accountability and transparency in the big non-governmental organisations, which do excellent work but have more to do on transparency, and it is about the accountability and transparency of the UN institutions, which are often the least transparent actors in development.

I feel strongly about accountability and transparency not just on behalf of the Daily Mail readers in Hackney North but because my family and those of many of my constituents come from the global south. I assure Members that people who live in the global south feel as strongly about accountability, transparency, good governance and minimising corruption as any Daily Mail reader. That is the context in which I wish to make my remarks.

We have spoken a lot about aid, but development is not only about aid. It is worth reminding the House that Africa loses $58 billion more in flows out of Africa than it receives in aid. Aid spending is dwarfed by the financial flows out of countries in Africa. Every year, the continent receives around $30 billion in aid, but it loses $192 billion—more than six times as much as it receives in aid—in debt repayments, lost tax revenue, tax transfers, multinational profits and other financial flows.

When we discuss this subject, we should not think that aid is the only instrument of development. Aid is important, and I defend the 0.7% contribution, but there are other important issues for the developing world. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) pointed out, the value of remittances to some countries of the global south are even more important than aid. The value of those remittances is that they go directly to communities, with no top- slicing through bureaucracy. In the event of humanitarian disaster, it is often remittances that get to the affected communities faster than any aid.

As the Labour party spokesperson on international development, I have been privileged to have been able to make a number of visits to all parts of the world in the past few months and see for myself how DFID money is spent. I went to Uganda with the International HIV/AIDS Alliance to see some really impressive projects focused on women and young people with HIV. I went to Ghana with ActionAid, where I saw how important women’s health projects were funded. I have also been to Somaliland, where I saw evidence of the drought that is sweeping across eastern and southern Africa. Anyone who says our money is being thrown away should see, as I saw, the starving peoples who have lost their livelihoods because their livestock has perished. They are dependent on the aid funds that come from overseas.

[Stephen Doughty]

Is not Somaliland a perfect example, because our aid, security support and diplomatic support are working, together with the Government there, to bring peace and stability in a region that is not known for its peace and stability? It is a perfect example of how we are doing things right.

[Ms Abbott]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that Somaliland is an example of how we are doing things right, although we would not see that on the pages of The Mail on Sunday.

[Mr Mitchell]

Is the hon. Lady aware that Somaliland absolutely makes her point? It has a budget of around £50 million, of which Britain provides something like £10 million, while the remittance value is more than £400 million. That shows that we must all look at more creative ways of ensuring that remittances are well used.

[Ms Abbott]

I agree. I come from a community that sends remittances. Not only are they very important and the diaspora communities that provide them true partners in development, but it is important that they are used creatively. I have been to the camps in Lebanon with Human Appeal and I visited Syrian refugees in Turkey, so I have seen for myself how well our aid can be used and how important it is.

Some very unpleasant remarks have been made about the Palestinian Authority. I am all for transparency and accountability, but let us remember that United States Secretary of State John Kerry said:

“Prime Minister Netanyahu made clear he does not wish for the collapse of the Palestinian Authority”.

He pointed out that, without the Palestinian Authority, Israel would have to

“shoulder the responsibility for providing basic services in the West Bank”.

The ODI report on the matter clearly said that the UK support on the ground helped to prevent economic collapse and an escalation in violence.

[Andy Slaughter]

I wonder whether my hon. Friend shares my dismay that there has been a concerted campaign today to demonise the Government’s funding of the Palestinian Authority, which the Minister has rightly resisted. Does she agree that, if there is concern about UK and EU money going into Palestine, we should be most concerned about the demolition of Palestinian homes and villages funded by the UK to make way for illegal Israeli settlements?

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[Ms Abbott]

My hon. Friend puts it very well. It is of no help to people in the region, particularly ordinary Palestinians on the west bank, to demonise the Palestinian Authority. I am confident that DFID is exercising scrutiny and is not giving money directly to so-called terrorists.

I said at the beginning that being committed to 0.7% is not the same as saying that we should not have more accountability and more transparency with all the key actors. I listened with interest to the testimony of Ian Birrell of The Mail on Sunday on 6 June to the International Development Committee’s inquiry into the Government’s use of private contractors. I want to let it be known that I am interested in the issues he raised. I share his concern that the Government might be allowing

“excessive profiteering off the back of British taxpayers on the one hand and off the backs of the poor”

on the other. Those issues are worth looking at. I know that the Chair of the International Development Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), thinks that, too.

I am also concerned about DFID’s use of the big four accountants, which I believe to be contrary to sustainable development. PricewaterhouseCoopers, for example, is involved in industrial-scale marketing of tax avoidance schemes for corporations in the global south. I have other concerns about how the Government are spending aid to subsidise the fossil fuel industry and on deportation deals and building prisons. However, having expressed my concerns, overall I think that every single speaker in this debate has spelled out how British aid has helped strengthen health and education systems across the global south and contributed to cutting extreme poverty between 1990 and 2011 by 60%. Our contributions to the global health fund and the Ross Fund have played an enormous role in the battle against the killers malaria, HIV/Aids and TB.

As it is, the UK spends less on aid as a proportion of gross national income than Sweden, Norway, Luxembourg, Denmark and Holland, but we are the first country to commit to the fixed 0.7% provision. When aid is spent efficiently—that will often mean locally or through small grants, as has been said this afternoon—it builds capacity in local institutions and reduces poverty and inequality. When Labour formed DFID, we did not do so to set up an aid industry; we did so with the aim of ending aid dependency.

Supporting 0.7% does not mean that we can suspend our critical faculties in regards to how efficiently and well some of the money is spent, but we should be proud of committing to spending 0.7% of GDP on aid. The money we spend through aid often gives us more influence and moral suasion than some of the money spent on military adventures. I am glad that almost every Member who has taken part in the debate has supported 0.7%. Certainly on this side of the House we stand not just for a commitment to 0.7%, but for a continuing commitment to scrutiny and accountability. That is not just for our voters, but because the people of the global south deserve no less.