Department for International Development

Debate between Laurence Robertson and Stephen Doughty

Monday 1st July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Robertson]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. For a prosperous country—we are supposed to be the fifth largest economy in the world—that is a small amount to be asked to pay, but it has an enormous impact across the world.

[Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

I wholeheartedly agree with what has just been said. Our aid has made a huge impact. Under both Labour and Conservative Governments, there has been cross-party consensus on this. It is one of the few issues on which we have consensus in this House, and it is a good job we do, because it has made a huge difference. I chair the all-party parliamentary group on HIV/AIDS, and our aid through institutions such as the Global Fund has made a huge difference. I want to commend the Government for their fantastic announcement of £1.4 billion for the Global Fund in recent days. In 2000, when I was starting to work on these issues, there were only 2 million people globally receiving antiretroviral treatment for HIV; today, that figure is 22 million. This is literally life-saving treatment that we have been able to provide through our aid.

[Mr Robertson]

The hon. Gentleman is right to talk about the cross-party support for this issue in the House. The 0.7% target goes back a very long time, and I am pleased that it was a Conservative-led Government who actually reached it, but it would be churlish not to recognise the work that Tony Blair did, for example, in highlighting the issue, and I am pleased to do so. Many other leading politicians have also done work on this. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that point, and I will come back to it in just a minute.

I mentioned the fact that we had given that £77 billion in aid since 2013, but what does that actually mean? It means that we have helped more than 1 billion children across the world to get an education, as well as helping more than 37 million children to be immunised and more than 40 million people to have access to clean water. These are things that we in this country take for granted, but our aid has helped people in those ways across the world and I am very proud of that.

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[Mr Robertson]

The hon. Lady raises a good point. I think it was Tony Blair who set up the separate Department, which provided it with focus. Thinking back before that, however, most right hon. and hon. Members would acknowledge the excellent work carried out by Baroness Chalker, even though the Department was then within the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

I suppose there are two ways of looking at it. When I travel and meet DFID officials abroad, I often meet officials from the FCO, and maybe also from other Departments linked to it. Overall, I agree with the hon. Lady that this is such an important subject, and it obviously should have close ties to the Foreign Office, and probably to other Departments, too. As I say, 25% of the overseas aid budget is spent by other Departments, so there has to be a close link. I am probably persuaded that that should be the case. I will talk to the successful leadership candidate, whoever they are, about this issue in due course.

I mentioned that other Departments spend about 25% of the aid budget, and that proportion has increased significantly—it was 11.4% in 2013. That spending can be a good thing, because it draws on the expertise of those other Departments. In certain cases, money is provided that might not have been so quickly forthcoming if those Departments had to queue outside the Treasury for it.

However, the spending raises the question of whether these other Departments quite have DFID’s experience and expertise in delivering aid. The Department of Health and Social Care, for example, might be expert in handling health-related issues—I am sure it is—but DFID has that experience of delivering projects abroad. There is a question mark over whether we have got to the right level. Hopefully the Minister will give us some guidance.

[Stephen Doughty]

The hon. Gentleman is generous in giving way again. Does he agree that that underlines the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) on the importance of having DFID leading on this? DFID has that expertise and experience as a separate Department and, actually, some of the criticisms levelled by the National Audit Office and others—I am not an aid purist, and some important aid spending needs to be done in conjunction with other Departments, such as through the Stabilisation Unit, International Climate Finance and other institutions —have been levelled at spending when it has been done well but without the remit of DFID. We need to see DFID in a leading role, using its expertise to ensure our money is spent effectively.

[Mr Robertson]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point, and I look forward to hearing whether the Minister thinks that 25% of the budget being spent by other Departments is about right, too high or too low. I have not necessarily come with answers. I am asking as many questions as I am giving answers, but that is the nature of this debate.

This spending also raises the question of transparency, because the other Departments do not have the same legislative requirements. For example, the International Development (Reporting and Transparency) Act 2006 requires DFID to report to Parliament on where the money is spent, but other Departments are not covered by the Act.

The targeting of aid is something else that concerns some people. In 2017, the last year for which figures are available, DFID spent 66% of its bilateral aid budget on the world’s poorest countries, but the other Departments spent only 25% of their bilateral budgets on the least developed countries. There are always explanations and more details behind these figures but, on the face of it, we need to look at it and ask questions.

Through bilateral aid, we have complete control of the projects we fund; and through multilateral aid, we work with other agencies and do not have the same control, and the priorities of those other agencies might be slightly different from ours. There are different nuances within each of those headings, too. This is never a simple subject.