International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill

Debate between Jim Murphy and Andrew Miller

Friday 12th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Murphy]

I do not have much voice left to talk about referendums, so let us concentrate on one at a time. I thought the Minister made a good, passionate and personal speech. I am more surprised that the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) is intending to vote against the manifesto commitment he stood on at the last general election than I am by anything the Minister said.

Labour Members believe that if the Bill becomes law, it will secure a vital marker in a journey that can be traced back through the establishment of the Department for International Development by the incoming Labour Government in 1997 and the adoption of this target by the Government back in 1974. In supporting the Bill, I wish to make four brief arguments: aid is needed; aid, properly targeted, is effective; fixing this target is correct; and investment must come with safeguards.

First, on the case for aid, for all the dry language of spending targets and goals, or statistics and shortfalls, on a scale of millions and billions, it is important not to forget what official development assistance is really about. As the former Prime Minister my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath has said, we live in an unequal world: 1 million babies a year die on their first and only day of life; one in eight people go to bed hungry each and every night; 1.5 billion people are trapped in the brutality of conflict-affected and fragile states; 58 million children are unable to go to school; and 20,000 under-fives die every year from easily curable diseases.

Impersonal figures, however, mask the human reality. Let me give just two examples. The 3 million-strong refugee crisis in Syria is impossible to appreciate, and although the scale is terrifying, the tragedy is personal. Like other hon. Members from both sides of the House, I have travelled to the countries that border Syria’s war. In the Beka’a valley I met a mother and father from Aleppo who had fled the fighting with their five children. The father was desperate to work and the mother was trying very hard to keep the household together. The children were grateful for the chance to go to school, but they were unable to do what they really wanted, which was to have the chance not to go to school but to go home. They were trapped in their camp, and despite the tremendous will and resilience of its inhabitants, the overriding feature is immense human misery. That is just one family story among the millions, and I would argue that we can never look the other way. I am pleased that the UK Government are investing on the current scale.

My second example comes from my visit to the Philippines following the destruction wrought by Typhoon Haiyan. During my time on Leyte island with the Catholic Fund for Overseas Development, we visited a sports field in Tanauan. The local priest pointed to a patch of disturbed turf no bigger than a penalty box and told us that there was a mass grave, home to 1,000 bodies. It was a vast unmarked grave. As a result of wars, natural disasters and the accidents of geography and parental wealth that leave so many disadvantaged to the point of extreme poverty and the risk of death from the day they are born, there is no question but that there are people all around the world who need our support. On some of the big global challenges, the support of development aid can make a difference.

Mr Speaker, I am advised that if I do not finish my speech by 11 am, I will be interrupted. I am therefore going to curtail my arguments, with your permission, and therefore some of the potential interventions.

My second argument is that British aid works. The support we give saves and changes lives. Today’s debate should be generally free of partisan rancour, and I am sure that all Members in the House will reflect on some of the achievements. In the same way as Labour Members acknowledge the work currently being done by this Government, I hope this Government will acknowledge the achievements of the previous Labour Government in helping to lift 3 million people out of poverty every year, helping some 40 million children into school and helping to fight against AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, as well as forging the millennium development goals.

[Andrew Miller]

I was privileged, as Chair of the Select Committee on Science and Technology, to visit some work that is being undertaken in Tanzania and is sponsored by DFID and the Gates Foundation. The Liverpool school of tropical medicine is putting a huge amount of work into that. It is clear, as our report spells out, that the result of that work does leave a lasting legacy—it is a legacy of which we should be proud.

[Mr Murphy]

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct on that. He talks about his experience in Tanzania and the sense of pride in some of the remarkable achievements on international development under the previous Labour Government. Many hundreds of thousands of lives were saved and transformed. It is important that we take that impulse, instinct and record and try to enshrine them in law.

My third point is that promises without action mean nothing, which is why we must lead. Many other rich nations are not pulling their weight: the UN appeal for Syria is almost 60% underfunded; just five richer nations have hit the 0.7% target; and the second most generous G8 member state is France, with a figure of about 0.4%. That is not a reason for us to do less; it is a reason to convince others to do more. After a process begun by Labour and continued under this Government—again, I commend them for it—ours is the only G8 nation to hit the target. Just as we have built international coalitions in the past, we must do so again to urge others to go further.

My final argument is that we are not giving a blank cheque. A fixed commitment from the UK is no blank cheque for wasteful spending. Taxpayers’ money must be guarded in every Department, but in one where a small amount of money can save a life, every pound wasted is a lost opportunity to save a life. That is why we welcome the provisions being introduced by the right hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk in his Bill, and we look forward to discussing the details on the oversight in Committee.

Finally, this Bill honours a commitment our country gave more than four decades ago to the world’s poor. It is a promise we have reaffirmed time and again, and it is a law that each of the main parties promised to legislate for in our manifestos. Passing this Bill is without doubt the right thing to do, and we should go further. British aid should not be treated as some sort of hidden secret. At times it feels that the consensus in this House has never been stronger, but that very sense has contributed to a lack of a heated debate on aid, implying that there is complacency. Often with the British public it feels that we are losing an argument that we are not properly making. Protecting the DFID budget while most other Departments are being cut of course leads to some anxiety, but we have to make an argument. Not only is development investment saving lives abroad, but it is improving the chances of our own nation, and not only in terms of trading with newly prosperous countries: such investment can help make our people and our country safer. The careful investment of world-class diplomacy and world-leading development can sometimes avoid the painful cure of military action, denying the opportunity for inequality to grow where terrorism and those who wish us malevolence exploit the sense of worthlessness and hopelessness that visits far too many families.

We should be proud of what we are seeking to achieve today. A very small Bill, on just a few sheets of paper, will save many hundreds of thousands of lives of people we will never meet and whose names we will never know. I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on his Bill, and we will, in years to come, look back with a real sense of pride on what we are, together, achieving today.