Draft African Development Bank (Fourteenth Replenishment of the African Development Fund) Order 2017 Draft Asian Development Bank (Eleventh Replenishment of the Asian Development Fund) Order 2017 Draft Caribbean Development Bank (Ninth Replenishment of the Unified Special Development Fund) Order 2017

Debate between Gareth Thomas and Rory Stewart

Monday 20th November 2017 General Committees

[Rory Stewart]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Owen. I will speak to all three draft orders in a single speech: the first pertains to the African Development Bank, the second to the Asian Development Bank and the third to the Caribbean Development Bank. Right hon. and hon. Members will be aware of our relationship with multinational development banks in general and why we work with them, so I will not waste too much time talking about that, but will focus instead on these specific banks and the money that we are giving them.

The overall argument is clear: the United Kingdom and other development partners give money to these banks because they allow us to do three things that would be difficult to do if we did not work with them. First, they give us a specialist reach into geographies in which the Department for International Development might not otherwise operate. For example, the Caribbean Development Bank specialises in small island states, and some of our work with the African Development Bank is in places such as the Central African Republic, where we do not have a permanent office. That is the geographical point.

Secondly, the banks allow us to leverage larger amounts of money than we would be able to provide on our own.

[Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Who is the head of the Caribbean Development Bank and when did the Minister last have a conversation with him?

[Rory Stewart]

The last correspondence with the Caribbean Development Bank was conducted by the new Secretary of State, whose letter to Dr Smith I have here. It is about an improvement plan. I am responsible for Africa, not directly for the Caribbean; work for the Caribbean is conducted by my colleague, Lord Bates.

If I can proceed, there are three types of argument for working with the three banks. The first is geographic; the second is about leveraging larger amounts of funds. We typically contribute 10%, 13% or 14% of the funds, particularly the concessional loan facilities for the banks, which allows us to leverage additional money. The third argument is the sector speciality and expertise provided by these banks. For example, the Asian Development Bank has expertise in energy and transport infrastructure in places such as Pakistan, which DFID would not have on its own.

Why these particular amounts of money? The first amount is £460 million, which will be given to the African Development Bank. The bank is run by a very distinguished Nigerian civil servant, Mr Adesina. It was set up in 1964 as part of a general development with regional banks that emerged from the first Bretton Woods institutions, which were set up in the 1940s to specialise in different regions. The African Development Bank allows us to work in some of the poorest countries in the world; as Members will be aware, 36 of the poorest countries in the world are in Africa.

Some 80% of the African Development Bank’s staff are themselves African, including very distinguished former senior Ministers from those countries. Its particular expertise is in both infrastructure and regional work between different countries. We have a new opportunity, working with the African Development Bank, and we believe that DFID can play an important role with the bank in convening the flows of new capital into Africa. There is a big push to get from the current billions of pounds of investment going into Africa to the potential trillions that could come in from the private sectors of China, India and the City of London.

The challenge, of course, is around the rules for the loans. There have been examples—Mozambique is probably the most flagrant—of private sector loans going into national Governments without proper concern or regulation. The African Development Bank is the perfect partner, we believe, for DFID to work with in trying for a really good multinational understanding as to how private sector flows, and in particular flows from new donors, can go into African countries without creating a new crisis of heavily indebted poor countries.

Although £460 million is a substantial amount of money, it is a 24% reduction on the amount that we gave at the previous replenishment. That represents some of our existing concerns about the African Development Bank. Perhaps I shall be able to expand in detail on some of those concerns, and how we might address them, in response to questions from right hon. and hon. Members; they will have seen them set out in the multilateral development review.

[Gareth Thomas]

Why does not the Minister expand on his concerns now? Do they relate to significant levels of corruption in the African Development Bank, or some other lack of sufficient rigour in its internal processes?

[Rory Stewart]

I should be delighted to expand on that now, but the shadow Minister has questions about it and I agreed with her that I would give the more detailed answers in responding to her speech.

Essentially, six areas have been identified, through the multilateral development review, in which the African Development Bank requires improvement. The first is in its delivery programme; we feel that there have been substantial delays in the processing of key bits of paperwork, so we have set a series of time limits. I will perhaps provide more details on those targets in response to the shadow Minister.

The second area is efficiency and value for money. That is particularly about keeping administrative costs below 2.5%. The third is to do with recruitment, and we have set recruitment targets. Along with the movement of the headquarters from Tunis to Abidjan, there has been a recruitment crisis. The fourth area is anti-corruption, including the processing of anti-corruption claims and ensuring that 75% of those are complete within a year. The final two areas of concern relate to countries in transition—making sure that the country offices are properly staffed, and that a duty of care for staff in those offices is observed.

[Rory Stewart]

I think the first thing is to set things in context. The African Development Bank scored well in the multilateral development review; it was in the top third of our assessment of beneficiary partners and implementing partners. That means that we would not think it appropriate in its case to set aside money on a performance basis. We think we struck the right balance by reducing the overall amount, agreeing key performance indicators, and managing through the normal process.

The basic answer to my right hon. Friend’s question is that the money will be transferred in a single amount, and our concerns about performance are reflected in the performance indicator agreement and the reduced total amount.

[Gareth Thomas]

Further to the question of the right hon. Member for East Devon, why did not the Minister decide to make some of the money conditional? Given the scale of his concerns, he might have said that £50 million of the £460 million was conditional on the bank’s meeting the objectives, or making sufficient progress with them. Surely holding back some money would be much more effective than a bit of sweet-talking in a committee, or over the phone to the head of the bank or its officials in-country.

[Rory Stewart]

I agree, and it is indeed a distinguished predecessor of mine who is mounting this barrage of questions against me.

[Gareth Thomas]

I have asked one or two questions.

[Rory Stewart]

Perhaps if the hon. Gentleman did not interrupt I could answer him more clearly. The answer is that we need to distinguish clearly between two separate things. One is performance indicators; I understood my right hon. Friend the Member for East Devon to be raising that question. The other is the question of contribution payment schedules.

As to performance indicators, in banks with poorer performance—the Caribbean Development Bank would be an example—we would indeed, out of the £18 million allocated, set £4.5 million as a performance reward. However, in the case of the African Development Bank, the tranche payment allows us to hold back 25% of the 2018 payment. If it did not meet the performance indicators, that 25% would not be delivered. It is therefore a question of performance schedules rather than performance indicators.

I move on to the Asian Development Bank and the second of the statutory instruments. The amount proposed to go to the Asian Development Bank is £110 million. That bank is, of course, a larger institution than the African Development Bank, so right hon. and hon. Members may be surprised that we are giving it a smaller amount of money. The answer, of course, is that because of the development of Asian countries and DFID’s focus on lower income countries, most of which tend to be in Africa, we end up giving more to the facilities of the African Development Bank. These are concessional loan facilities, designed to work in poorer countries.

We have many fewer concerns with the Asian Development Bank than with the African Development Bank. The Asian Development Bank performed extremely well in the multilateral development review—it was right up there with the World Bank. Questions could be raised about some areas of its programme, but they are not directly relevant to the concessional loan financing that we are providing. We might have a chance to discuss them later.

That brings me to the smallest and perhaps most controversial element of our concessional loan finance, which is to the Caribbean Development Bank. We approach that bank with a degree of caution, but it is still an institution that we want to support and keep alive because it has a particular niche speciality in smaller island states. In particular, it will be our key partner through its main balance sheet in working through vital reconstruction after the hurricanes in places such as the British Virgin Islands and Anguilla, and, through the concessional funds, on the Leeward Islands and Montserrat. We believe we are justified in giving a small amount of money—relatively small compared with the other funds—of £18 million to the bank, to focus on its particular areas of expertise. However, as I said, we have laid aside £4.5 million out of that £18 million as a performance incentive. Only £13.5 million will be disbursed immediately, with £4.5 million to be held back to ensure that the bank delivers against our targets.

The targets, set out in the Secretary of State’s letter to the Caribbean Development Bank, are: publishing project information to international aid transparency initiative standards; 100,000 beneficiaries—100,000 students at school; and that project completion reports are completed at 90% within two years.

With that, I commend the orders to the Committee. I look forward to a longer discussion in response to speeches from the shadow Minister and other right hon and hon. Members.

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[Gareth Thomas]

I would like to follow up some of the interventions that I made earlier. It would be good to hear from the Minister some examples of projects that he has discussed with his officials that have given him continued confidence in the work of the three multilateral development banks. I express, in passing, disappointment that we have not had the opportunity to consider each of the orders separately. Certainly in the past that has been the practice, but a decision has been made and I accept that decision.

[Rory Stewart]

I stand to be corrected by you, Mr Owen, but I believe that we were offered that chance and the Committee made its decision. We would have been very happy to consider the orders separately, had the hon. Member for City of Durham wished to do so.

Commonwealth Development Corporation Bill

Debate between Gareth Thomas and Rory Stewart

Programme motion: House of Commons & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 10th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Rory Stewart)]

I begin by thanking right hon. and hon. Members. This has been a very instructive process. The new clauses and amendments tabled reflect what was a really good Bill Committee stage. The Government have huge respect for the intelligence, focus and precision of these amendments, and we hope that Members will see that all the concerns that have been expressed are going to be addressed through the strategy that is produced.

Before I address the new clauses and amendments in turn, I pay tribute very strongly to the Members on both sides of the House who have demonstrated their support for international development. I pay particular tribute to the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Tommy Sheppard), who gave an extremely powerful speech in support of international development and about the importance of standing up and having the courage to defend complex and innovative projects.

[Mr Gareth Thomas]

At the outset of his remarks, will the Minister explain why the legislation has preceded the strategy?

[Rory Stewart]

I shall deal with that when discussing the second set of amendments, which relate to that directly, but first I want to continue to pay tribute to other Members of Parliament, from both sides of the House, for their support for CDC. I was struck by the support of the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) for the Virunga project in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, by the in-principle support of the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady), and particularly by the phrase produced by the hon. Member for Edmonton (Kate Osamor) that is absolutely right in guiding us as we go forward: we need to get the right balance between long-term investment and short-term need.

I should just recapitulate the extraordinary work that CDC has done and echo the thanks of the hon. Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller). It has been a really tough time. As Members of Parliament, we are used to being under full public scrutiny and attack. CDC works very hard and has delivered some high-quality projects, and this has been a very tough period for it.

Three types of amendments have been tabled. The first set basically says yes, we should be giving money to CDC, but we should be giving slightly less money to CDC; the second set says that there should be restrictions on the Government’s ability to give money to CDC; and the third set would restrict what CDC itself can do with the money. Essentially, the Government’s position is that these are all good points, but they are better dealt with through the governance mechanisms and the strategy than through statutory, primary legislation.

I shall deal first with amendments 1 to 5 and new clause 10, which essentially say yes, we should give money to CDC, but we should give less money to CDC. Why do we disagree with what was essentially the argument put forward by the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty)? First, because, with respect, I still believe that the hon. Member for Glasgow North is confusing the stock and the flow. The fact is that the money put into CDC will be recycled. For the sake of argument, if an investment was 10 to 12 years in length and CDC had $12 billion in the pot, it would be in a position to maintain the current rate of investment of around $1 billion a year—the money would come back and go bounce again at around $1 billion a year. It is not fair to compare what happens in a capital stock used for equity debt investment with the annual expenditure of a Department.

Secondly, there is the question of demand, which the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth referred to. The demand is almost limitless. It is calculated that $2.5 trillion is going to be required annually by 2030 to meet the sustainable development goals, which is why the relevant question is not the demand for the money but the question of the absorptive capacity, which the hon. Gentleman raised.

Thirdly, the Bill is enabling legislation that sets a ceiling—a maximum limit; it is not saying, “This is the amount of money we are going to give.” Fourthly, the design is for the money to go into patient, long-term investment. The three-year review proposed in one of the amendments simply will not work for investments that are intended to be, on average, 10 years in length.

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[Rory Stewart]

Let me clarify this. The £6 billion represents an additional £4.5 billion, because CDC already has £1.5 billion. We anticipate that that would cover the next five-year period to enable CDC, at maximum—we do not expect it to draw down the maximum amount—to be able to make the kinds of levels of investment that it made last year. The next £6 billion—it is not an additional £12 billion, but an additional £6 billion—would apply to the next five-year period. We are looking at a steady state allocation, which might, at maximum, allow CDC to meet the kind of expenditure levels that it gets next year.

Let me move on now to new clauses 2, 5 and 6 and amendment 6. Essentially, these are a series of measures that restrict the power of the Government to give money to CDC. They do that either by saying that they should not be able to boost the amount of money that CDC has through delegated legislation, or through asking for a strategy to be put in place before the money is disbursed. Again, these measures are not appropriate. The role of Parliament as specified for CDC in the Overseas Resources Development Act 1948 and the Commonwealth Development Corporation Act 1999 quite correctly relates to two things: the setting up of this body and the creation of a cap on the amount of money that this body is given.

However, it is not normal for Parliament to get involved in the detailed implementation of specialist business cases. That is true in everything that the legislature does in its relationship to the Executive. The money allocated to our Department in general through the Budget, which this House votes on, is then delegated to civil servants and to the Government to determine how it is spent. The same will be true here, but the strategy that will come forward will reflect very closely the arguments that have been made at the Committee stage and on Report. We will continue to remain in very close touch with Members of Parliament, and we will be judged by our ability to deliver, through that strategy, something that will address those concerns—above all, through the development impact grid and the development impact assessments on the individual business cases, which will address these particular issues.

[Mr Gareth Thomas]

Will the Minister specifically comment on the use of tax havens by CDC, and will he and other Ministers in his Department echo previous statements by the Secretary of State and instruct CDC to desist from using tax havens for future investments?

[Rory Stewart]

That is an invitation to move on to the last group of amendments, which comprises new clauses 8, 9, 3 and 7, one of which relates to the issue of offshore financial centres. These are restrictions on what CDC itself can do. There is a suggestion that there should be an annual obligation on ICAI to produce reports on CDC. Then there are restrictions on the routes through which CDC can put its money, and there are attempts through the new clauses to restrict the sectors and the countries in which CDC can invest. Let me take them in turn.

On ICAI, we are very open to scrutiny. The CDC has been scrutinised by the International Development Committee, the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee. We expect it to be scrutinised in that way and to be scrutinised by ICAI. We welcome scrutiny from ICAI. However, we do not think it is for the Government to impose obligations on an independent regulator. It should be for ICAI to determine its priorities and where it thinks the problems are, and to be able to apply its scrutiny accordingly. It may determine that an annual scrutiny of 10-year investments does not make sense and decide to do it more frequently, but that should be for ICAI, not for statutory legislation of this House.