Commonwealth Development Corporation Bill

Debate between Fiona Bruce and Mark Field

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons
Tuesday 29th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

Although this is a relatively straightforward Bill, which I had hoped would have the support of all Members of the House, it is worth examining some aspects of the strategic background to our DFID commitments.

I associate myself wholeheartedly with the wise and experienced words of my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) and my hon. Friend the Member for Rochford and Southend East (James Duddridge) when they touched on the transformation of the CDC’s work over the past half-decade or so. I must confess that I did not recognise some of the rather more jaundiced views of its work, as set out in the rather long contribution from the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty).

[Fiona Bruce]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the selective quoting of the NAO report by the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth, who is no longer in his place, did not do justice to its conclusion that, overall, DFID’s grip on the CDC is strong and that the CDC has made radical improvements since the NAO’s last report in 2008?

[Mark Field]

I agree with everything my hon. Friend has to say.

I am glad that the Secretary of State is now back in her place, and I wholeheartedly support her somewhat expansive approach, which has been criticised in certain quarters during the debate. She appears determined to ensure that the UK utilises all its assets, including the DFID budget, to secure an optimal deal for the nation, not just as we extricate ourselves from the EU, but in the years to come.

That must mean extending DFID’s reach beyond the traditional aid referred to in the debate to broader development and infrastructure and to things such as security, but also to community sustainability and resilience across the globe. That change is long overdue, and I should like briefly to set out some of the somewhat negative ways in which DFID’s culture has developed since the Department was established in 1997, which I sincerely trust the Bill will help to address.

DFID was originally seen as a key component of an ethical foreign policy, centralising in a single Department overseas aid moneys that were previously in the budgets of the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office. The result was that those major Departments of State were left at that time with little or no financial autonomy on key international projects—regrettably, in my view.

Instead, a new culture of programming took hold in DFID, which managed out what was seen as inappropriate spending that could cause presentational problems for the Government of the day. Cautious mandarins became more risk averse, and DFID project money was routinely awarded to known international bodies, such as the World Bank or UNICEF, rather than to smaller, nimbler UK organisations and businesses.

That ensured that the Government would not be seen to be promoting corporate Britain abroad under the cloak of humanitarian assistance, but it also left those recognised brands to deal with any fallout, should questions be raised about the success of particular programmes. Indeed, the very respectability of those organisations tended to mute any testing questioning about the effectiveness and impact of what has become an ever-larger amount of British aid money. That shift, I fear, went hand in hand with the emergence of increasingly professional bidders, who learned to speak the language of DFID programmers to win contracts.

Too often, the result has been ponderous, expensive and wasteful programming, and I know that that culture is very much in the sights of the Secretary of State, who wants to eradicate it. In part, DFID programmers have often been overloaded with cash, which has been increasingly bundled off to the international bodies I mentioned. I am therefore absolutely delighted that the Bill increases the scope for money to be used by domestic bodies that are within the Government’s control and able to enact the Government’s priorities in the new world rapidly unfolding before us.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield laid out the way in which the CDC rightly operates. There is rightly oversight from not just the Government but a range of Select Committees, but we ultimately leave the organisation to get on and do the job that it is best able to achieve.

We need, above all, to ensure that DFID is not as process driven as it has perhaps been in the past, which has reduced our agility in this field and risked the benchmark for the success of our development aid being simply the amount spent, rather than the added value delivered, as has been referred to. That does not make our ongoing 0.7% commitment to overseas aid wrong—some of my right hon. and hon. Friends would probably disagree with that—and I am absolutely supportive of it, as is my hon. Friend the Member for Rochford and Southend East. Indeed, the case for extending Britain’s reach in this field grows stronger every day as we are confronted domestically with problems whose roots start many thousands of miles away.

I do, though, question whether, particularly as we leave the EU, large parts of DFID’s budget should not now be made available to the Foreign Office, the Ministry of Defence or the Department for International Trade, all of which should, necessarily and rightly, come under some scrutiny and oversight from DFID, but there should, none the less, be that sense of joined-up co-operation within the Government. That would enable and authorise those on the ground, whether in overseas embassies, military bases, or part and parcel of our intelligence services, to spend sensibly, carefully and locally against agreed objectives rather than within the rather ham-fisted DFID programming process.