International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill

Fiona Bruce Excerpts

Friday 12th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

Britain should rightly be proud of being the first G8 country to reach the internationally agreed target of 0.7% of GNI expenditure on development support for the poorest countries on earth. In one respect—perhaps only one, in this debate—my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) and I are not that far apart. It is not reaching the target that counts, nor even legislating for it, although I am proud to be a sponsor of this Bill, supported across the parties as it is. What is achieved with UK taxpayers’ money to transform the lives of the poorest people on earth is what really counts.

The point on which I would take issue with my hon. Friend concerns the transformation that our DFID programme is making. It is securing schooling for 11 million children, more than we educate in this country, at 2.5% of the cost. It is providing 43 million with safe drinking water and improved sanitation and vaccinating more children against preventable diseases than there are people in the whole of the UK. Every one of the people helped is an individual: a mother, a father or a child with loved ones and with hopes and dreams just like ours. That was brought home to me many years ago in Tanzania, as was how comparatively rich we are in one of the richest countries on earth. In this country, we spend more on uneaten food that we throw away than our entire aid budget: does that not put into context the words of this debate’s detractors?

On that trip to Tanzania many years ago it was brought home to me that these people are not just statistics but individuals. I was invited to the home of the headmaster of the school that British people are supporting and I was shocked that he, his wife and his five children did not live in a house. They lived in a container, their meagre belongings hung up in plastic bags from hooks on the ceiling. Their furniture was merely a few mattresses, stacked up against the wall during the day to make space, and one chair. They had no bathroom or kitchen; their toilet was a communal latrine and their kitchen a charcoal fire on the edge of the road. He was the headmaster of a school.

I will never forget the lovely smiling face of their 15-year-old son, Sam. My son Sam—my oldest son, as this was their oldest boy—was with me, and he was not quite 15. The difference between that 15-year-old boy and my son is that a short time later that boy was dead. He had died of malaria. There was no treatment available. Addressing such needs—need is the basis of UK aid provision—is, quite simply, morally and compassionately the right thing to do. In an era of huge inequalities across the world and global communication, we cannot say that we do not know of the acute deprivation other people suffer. We cannot pass by on the other side and that is why legislating in this regard is so important.

I believe that as we promote the Bill the majority of UK taxpayers are with us. Younger people certainly are. We need only to consider how generously they respond to disaster relief requests. A child is vaccinated every two seconds through the work of this nation and a child’s life saved every—[Interruption.]