International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill

Earl of Sandwich Excerpts

Friday 23rd January 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Sandwich (CB)]

My Lords, this is an historic occasion which should make us all proud of belonging to an outward-looking United Kingdom. It was a pleasure to hear the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, lead this debate. The Bill provides us with an opportunity to re-emphasise the importance of maintaining our aid programme at its present level. We are not the first country to reach 0.7%—far from it—but we are recognised as among the foremost of OECD countries in delivering an effective programme.

I have spent most of my working life working with aid agencies, especially Christian Aid and Save the Children. However, I am not an uncritical supporter of aid. I listened to the forceful contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, with particular interest. We must acknowledge that there are failures in both official and voluntary sectors, and I know aid is wasted or diverted, especially during emergencies. Yet I strongly support the size of our aid programme and I have seen enough to be convinced of the potential long-term value of both humanitarian and development aid, especially as a catalyst to stability and stronger local initiative and participation.

No one can deny the necessity of humanitarian aid and there are many competing demands for it. I was with the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, as he described those demands. Among them are the girls in South Sudan, the Syrian refugee camps, the vast Somali camps in Kenya and the victims of Ebola in Sierra Leone. Our voluntary aid agencies have an outstanding record alongside UNHCR, ever since the Indo-China emergency, bringing emergency relief and providing jobs and education—the two essentials that refugees dream of but can scarcely reach.

Long-term development is a more difficult concept to explain to the public. For some, it implies interference in another state’s internal affairs and the distortion of a national economy, as has certainly occurred for good or ill in countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan. However, to most people, development is the basis of economic survival and sustainability. It means immunisation, reproductive health, the reduction of infant mortality and the halving of under-five mortality since 1990. These are the pillars of successful aid. Capacity and institution-building are equally important.

As has been mentioned several times, one of the best reports on our development aid programme was carried out in 2012 by our own Economic Affairs Committee. The report generally commended DfID but made criticisms as well, notably that there was insufficient evidence of aid’s contribution to economic growth, that aid could undermine local economies and that there were considerable risks of corruption. All these still apply to aid today but this Government have set up an impressive watchdog in the form of the Independent Commission for Aid Impact, reporting to the International Development Select Committee. I did not agree with the committee that the 0.7% target should not be enshrined in legislation. Its argument was, broadly, that any ring-fenced target would place an undue emphasis on quantity. I understand the point but it is much exaggerated. International targets are now widely used and there is a strong moral case for a minimum percentage of national wealth. That does not mean that aid money will be wasted as end-of-year surpluses accumulate in most businesses and must be properly managed. However, that lays a greater responsibility on the ICAI, the IDC and our own EU Select Committee.

An essential element of the Bill is the duty to lay a Statement before Parliament if the target is not met. It is inevitable that that will happen before the end of a year. As the National Audit Office pointed out, there should be no rush to make up lost ground unnecessarily. In fact, the NAO recommended a two-year target to avoid that happening. I am sure that the Minister will comment on that.

I, too, was pleased to see in Clause 5 the need for the Secretary of State to commission an independent evaluation to show value for money. That complements the present arrangement introduced by the coalition. We must recognise, however, that there is a proportion of the public, perhaps as high as one in three, who believe that the 0.7% figure is too high. That suggests to me that the aid lobby is not doing enough to explain the purposes of aid and what it can achieve. We must make more of the argument of self-interest. For example, we need to find ways to stem the flow of migration. One of those is to reduce conflict and support local economies. Our own economy benefits from rising standards in developing countries, which can bring us jobs through aid, trade and investment. It is imperative to fight the scourge of Ebola, not just for humanitarian reasons but because it could easily affect this country. Development education and global awareness is another area in which we as a country benefit from our outreach to the poorest parts of the world.

Finally, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, that the Bill sends an important signal to other countries that they, too, must meet their aid targets. That is particularly important as we look towards the future financing of international development and the post-2015 sustainable development goals.