Foreign Aid Expenditure

Joan Ryan Excerpts

Monday 13th June 2016 Westminster Hall

[Joan Ryan (Enfield North) (Lab)]

Three weeks after Labour won the 1997 general election, we pledged that Britain would meet the UN target to spend 0.7% of our gross national income on international development. That is one of the acts of which I am most proud from our time in office. I do not deny the important role that the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives have played in ensuring that it has become a cross-party national commitment—one that only a handful of countries in the world have met.

However, none of us who support international aid believes we are writing the Department for International Development a blank cheque. We must always ensure that aid meets three tests: it must be effective and transparent, and it must reflect our country’s values. In the case of the aid we give to the Palestinian Authority, we are failing those three tests. Let me give one example: the issue of the PA’s payments to convicted Palestinian terrorists, including, we must assume, Taleb Mehamara, the uncle of the Sarona market murderers, a member of a terror cell that in 2002 targeted Israelis, killing four in a shooting attack. We are not talking about, as one DFID Minister claimed in 2012,

“social assistance programmes to provide welfare payments”.

Instead, by operating a perverse sliding scale where people receive more money the longer their sentence—in some cases as much as five times the average monthly wage in Ramallah—the payments actually incentivise people to commit the most terrible acts of violence. I simply do not see how that advances the cause of a two-state solution. What are the Government doing about it?

Last month, Palestinian Media Watch showed how the PA sought to deceive international donors by shutting the Ministry of Prisoners’ Affairs and claiming that the Palestine Liberation Organisation would assume responsibility for those payments, but that was merely financial sleight of hand.

[Sir Desmond Swayne]

I have had discussions with the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister of the Palestinian Authority and other officials, and I continually make the point that the right hon. Lady rightly makes: if these are welfare payments, they must be made like welfare payments. The reality is that we do not pay them. Our taxpayers’ money goes to build the Palestinian Authority so it is able to morph into the Government of a Palestinian state when that opportunity arises. We pay named civil servants to provide public services.

[Joan Ryan]

I think the Minister understands the point I am making and wilfully will not look at this. In fact, the payments we make enable the Palestinian Authority to make its payments to prisoners.

In 2015, the PA raised its annual transfer to the PLO via the Palestinian National Fund to 481 million shekels—the amount it needed to fund the newly created PLO Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs. That amount was virtually identical to the budget of the old PA Ministry of Prisoners’ Affairs—the point I am making to the Minister. I wrote to Ministers last month demanding that direct aid to the PA be suspended while these serious allegations are investigated. In response, I was told by Ministers that the Palestinian Ministry of Finance has confirmed to DFID—we have heard this again today—that

“prisoner payments are fully administered”

by the PLO. With respect, I urge Ministers to dig a little deeper. They should be asking questions about the source of the money, not who is doling it out.

[Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)]

I would like to ask my right hon. Friend two questions. First, is she saying that aid to the Palestinian Authority should be suspended? How does she respond to the passage in the report that was referred to earlier, which says:

“To the extent that collapse of the PA or the Palestinian economy would massively increase unemployment, this would raise the chances of a violent escalation”?

Secondly, is she saying that every Palestinian prisoner in Israeli custody is a terrorist?

[Joan Ryan]

On my hon. Friend’s second point, I have not said that. He just said that, not me. On his first point, I think, as we have said, that tests for aid are very important if there is to be public confidence in where aid goes to. It is important that the aid is suspended subject to an inquiry, which could happen very quickly. I am not in any way against giving aid to Palestinians, as long as it is spent in the right way.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. Does she agree that one of the ways forward in this debate about how DFID aid is spent in Israel and Palestine is for there to be increased spending on people-to-people co-existence policies?

[Joan Ryan]

I absolutely agree. I am not going to take any more interventions, as I want to finish my remarks. My hon. Friend makes a very valuable point.

Repeated warnings have been ignored. Nearly two years ago, for instance, the International Development Committee suggested that there is a real risk that the payment of UK aid to the PA in this fashion simply enables it

“to release alternative funds which allow these payments”

to convicted terrorists “to continue”. That is the very point I am making.

While our aid potentially helps to line the pockets of the men of violence, we are providing pitiable support to the co-existence projects that bring Israelis and Palestinians together, as my hon. Friend has said. I have written to the Secretary of State listing a number of co-existence projects that enable Palestinians and Israelis to work together, demonstrating what they have in common, not what divides them. I have calculated that less than 13% of the £1.14 million from the Government’s conflict, stability and security fund spent in Israel and the Palestinian territories funds co-existence projects. That represents a mere 0.2% of the roughly £72 million that DFID spends in the Palestinian territories.

Britain can and must help to work towards an independent, democratic Palestinian state living alongside an Israel that is safe and secure within recognised borders. At the moment, I fear that our aid to the Palestinian Authority might be taking us further away from that goal, which is why, as I have previously argued, we urgently need an independent inquiry and a radical rethink.

--- Later in debate ---

[Patricia Gibson]

I am confining my remarks here to the misinformation perpetrated about foreign aid with the sole agenda of undermining that 0.7% commitment. That is despicable. In effect, it is waging a press war against the most vulnerable people on our planet, which is wholly outrageous, and we should be willing to say so.

[Joan Ryan]

As far as I can see, nobody in this room who has put questions about aid, particularly to the Palestinian Authority, and about the desire for transparency, is saying that the 0.7% is wrong. In fact, everyone who has made that point has expressed a firm commitment to the 0.7% and the desire for transparency.

[Patricia Gibson]

Absolutely. I have not suggested that we should not scrutinise the budget, and I apologise if I have come across as doing so. I am saying that the agenda of certain sections of the press is to undermine the entire ethos of the 0.7% commitment, and of foreign aid altogether. I recognise what the right hon. Lady says about nobody questioning the 0.7%, but we must be careful where that agenda takes us.

Aid at its current level must continue. To reduce it is to say that we have no particular commitment or humanitarian responsibility to those born into the very worst poverty. Although foreign visits might give an insight into such poverty, people in this room probably cannot comprehend it. We are talking about some of the least well-off people on our planet. I do not think we want to say that we do not have a particular responsibility to them. We must be very careful and mindful where the right-wing agenda in certain sections of the tabloid press takes us.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)]

Nearly all the direct UK grant to the Palestinian Authority is provided through the Department for International Development’s “Statebuilding and Service Delivery Grant”, and the Minister must do much more to assure us that it is not simply being paid—untied and un-earmarked—into the central treasury account of the Palestinian Authority, and that the verification of the funds is more than simply a notional accounting exercise. The Overseas Development Institute concluded that it is of “questionable robustness” and “provides few fiduciary assurances”.

By contrast, as we have heard, just 0.2% of 0.2% of the money that DFID spends in the Palestinian territories goes to projects bringing Palestinians and Israelis together. I have visited the group that was mentioned earlier and that brings Israeli and Palestinian students together to break down barriers and acquire new skills. Actually, it would be quite useful if the Minister noted some of this down, so that he can answer the specific questions that he has been asked when he sums up at the end of the debate.

For example, can the Minister consider funding the Cherish Project and the One to One Children’s Fund, which tackle the mental health problems suffered by children affected on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Would he consider funding OneVoice, which gives mainstream Israelis and Palestinians a voice, helping them to campaign for a peaceful two-state solution? The Aviv Peace Impact fund creates jobs and boosts prosperity by investing in growing businesses that employ Palestinians and Israelis side by side. Also, will he go to Rawabi, a new city that I have visited, which has new homes for 40,000 people in the west bank, a hospital, sports and community facilities, a shopping mall, offices and a business park that will provide jobs and prosperity for thousands of Palestinians, but which needs support and investment? He ought to look at funding Rawabi.

I have some specific questions for the Minister. Will he publish the memorandum of understanding with the Palestinian Authority? Will he commit to DFID implementing the 2014 recommendations on prisoners?

[Joan Ryan]

I simply rise to ask my hon. Friend a question: does he agree that when we ask for this forensic analysis of DFID spend, we do so in order to support the 0.7% commitment, because if there is any question about that spend it will undermine the whole project?

[Ian Austin]

I agree with my right hon. Friend entirely and I am grateful for the extra minute that she has given me to speak.

I also want to ask the Minister whether he will tackle the Palestinian Authority on the evidence of incitement. We should use Britain’s aid spending to bring people together by promoting peace and co-existence, tackling poverty, and creating jobs for Palestinians by promoting trade and economic development in the west bank and Gaza. The British people would be proud to support projects such as the ones I have mentioned, instead of being so concerned about support for terrorists that they back the Daily Mail campaigns against international aid.

The truth is that British aid feeds 25 million under-fives, educates 11 million children, has helped 4.3 million babies to be born safely, has helped to tackle Ebola in Africa, feeds the starving, helps refugees and builds stronger economies around the world. It does all that and so much more, but I am afraid that it also funds the Palestinian Authority, which in turn funds terrorists, and that undermines much of the good work that it does.