Foreign Aid Expenditure

Fiona Bruce Excerpts

Monday 13th June 2016 Westminster Hall

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

I rise to support the 0.7% target, in particular with reference to the impact that DFID has made to reaching more than 62 million people with clean water, sanitation and hygiene—WASH—support. Behind that statistic, the lives of so many individuals have been transformed. I saw that when I went to Nepal as a member of the International Development Committee last year. We saw a scheme that had recently provided piped water to a remote village of 600 people, including to two elderly former Gurkha soldiers. One of them proudly showed me the water tap to his home and his vegetable garden, which he was able to tend lovingly as a result of having a water supply. He told me that the children of the village are now able to spend more time in school because they do not have to spend hours every day carrying water for the villagers.

That scheme was led by a young engineer from the current Gurkha regiment. It was administered by the Gurkha Welfare Trust and funded by DFID. What was truly remarkable was not only that the scheme engaged villagers from the whole village in implementing it, but that it cost just £18,000 in UK aid. Some 600 lives have been transformed—there have been improvements in health, hygiene, nutrition, education and life chances for all of those people and their families—for just £18,000. Those who criticise UK aid’s value for money will, I hope, think again on hearing of that scheme.

We can be very proud that DFID’s WASH investments have led to improved health and life chances outcomes across the globe, just as in that Nepalese village. As WaterAid’s report “Water: At What Cost? The State of the World’s Water 2016” states:

“The lack of access to an affordable, convenient, improved water source is one of the biggest barriers to escaping a life of poverty and disease.”

As evidence from another DFID-funded scheme in Bangladesh shows, DFID’s WASH programmes have a wide impact on development. There have been reductions in infant diarrhoea—a major cause of infant sickness and death in developing countries—in child stunting, and in the effect of parasitic worms and other infectious diseases, including water-borne diseases. There have been improvements in school enrolment and attendance, and a reduction in school drop-out rates, particularly for girls. There is evidence of reduced gender inequality, as it is often not just children but women who spend time fetching water.

UK aid helps with WASH programmes not just in remote rural areas. DFID’s WASH programmes are increasingly exploring the challenges of providing water and sanitation improvements in urban slums. About 80% of the estimated 1.7 million inhabitants of Mozambique’s capital, Maputo, live in barrios, often in shacks partly built with corrugated iron. Just 9% of homes are connected to the sewerage system, and half of all Maputo’s faecal matter is buried in people’s backyards, which contaminates the water system. A WASH scheme has been helping by providing investment and equipment, building skills and helping the Government to create appropriate regulations to enable the cost-effective collection and disposal of sewage by small local contractors. DFID is funding a not-for-profit company called Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor, which is helping to develop cost-effective models for providing WASH in urban settings. For the detractors of UK aid expenditure’s value for money, I repeat that it is a not-for-profit company.

[Mrs Hodgson]

The hon. Lady is making an excellent speech. On the detractors of the UK aid spend, I wish she could print that list of those great projects in a national newspaper. We need to advertise the great work DFID is doing around the world. We all know about it, but I do not think that the public appreciate it, and nor do they know the details she has highlighted.

[Fiona Bruce]

The hon. Lady makes an excellent point, and I agree with her. The International Development Committee has been urging DFID and Ministers to do that, because she is absolutely right that the public will wholeheartedly support and endorse such schemes.

[Mrs Helen Grant]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the huge public response to the Nepal earthquake, which she mentioned, shows that British people care about the plight of the poorest?

[Fiona Bruce]

I absolutely agree. The wonderful thing is that DFID’s funds often lever in other, additional moneys through the schemes that the Department so intelligently implements.

DFID set itself ambitious results targets for WASH. Its initial commitment, only six years ago, in 2010, was to provide 15 million people with first-time access to it. That figure was doubled, and then redoubled, to a target of reaching 60 million people during 2011 to 2015. In 2015, after investing almost £700 million over the previous five years on WASH programmes in 27 countries, DFID announced that it had exceeded its target by reaching 62.9 million people. That is the number of people that DFID states have gained access to clean water, toilets or hand-washing facilities, or have been reached through programmes to encourage better hygiene practices. Following that, DFID has committed itself to reach a further 60 million people with sustainable access to safe drinking water or sanitation by 2020.

Levels of disease from living in insanitary conditions that families across the globe still suffer in the 21st century were last seen in this country in the Victorian era. Those families have children for whom they have the same hopes and dreams as we do for ours. Is it too much to ask that we commit only 0.7% of our gross national income—out of all our abundance—to help combat that?