Official Development Assistance Target

Lisa Cameron Excerpts

Monday 13th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Patrick Grady]

I will be happy to return to that, but I would point out that 0.7% is a proportion of gross national income, so Scotland, under a Barnett formula or whatever, as an independent country, would continue to spend its equivalent proportion or possibly more.

We have yet another ministerial team in DFID. I welcome all those Ministers to their posts, especially those who have arrived via the Government Whips Office, but they should know that the trend away from the aid target for DFID spending is something that many of us have been keeping an eye on for many years, and it is a cause for concern. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stirling pointed out earlier, over 27% of ODA funds are now spent by Departments other than DFID, including the Home Office and the Ministry of Defence. I have been particularly concerned about the increasing amount of spending that is effectively being double-counted, towards both the 0.7% aid target and the NATO defence spending target of 2% of gross national income. I know that Ministers will say that they do not mark their own homework and that it cannot be helped if some spending meets both measurements, but every effort should be made to ensure that the two targets are reached with distinct spending and that any overlap just happens to be a bonus.

The National Audit Office concluded in June 2019 that aid spending outside DFID was not transparent enough. Those concerns can only be compounded by the growing rumour and speculation in the press and elsewhere about the future of the Department and the Government’s commitment to the ODA target. The Tory manifesto in this election barely mentioned international development and made no reference to the sustainable development goals. All the other main parties committed to maintaining DFID as a stand-alone Department, but the Tory manifesto was silent on that. The Minister now has an important opportunity to clarify, on the record, the Government’s position and intentions. Members have been asking about this all day, and we do not want to hear a “wait and see” response. He has seen my early-day motion about this issue and he knew perfectly well what the subject of this debate would be from the title, so here goes.

Can the Minister give the House a categorical assurance that the Government will spend 0.7% of gross national income on official development assistance each year for the lifetime of this Parliament? To do anything else would jeopardise over 20 years of cross-party consensus and risk undermining any pretence to global leadership on these issues. Can he confirm that the Government will not seek to change, or initiate changes to, pre-existing international definitions of official development assistance? If the OECD definition were to change, that should be done on the basis of an evidential need and using a consensus-based approach. At the very least, any changes would need to be agreed through a genuinely participative, consultative, global process. It would defeat the entire purpose of meeting the target if the definition of aid were to be arbitrarily or unilaterally changed, especially if it allowed aid to be used for diplomacy, military or corporate commercial purposes.

Can the Minister outline what discussions, if any, have taken place within Government about the continued existence of DFID as a dedicated, stand-alone Department? What is his response to newspaper reports that DFID might be retained as a Department, but that its Secretary of State would also be the Foreign Secretary? He must surely accept that if that were to happen, it would be a merger of the FCO and DFID in all but name. If DFID is to remain both effective and accountable, it must have its own dedicated Secretary of State, who can champion its cause in the Cabinet and answer questions on the Floor of this House.

Have any such discussions about the future of the Department been part of preparations for the Government’s proposed integrated security, defence and foreign policy review? As the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton asked earlier from the Labour Front Bench, what is the timetable for the review? Will it be subject to consultation, and what other opportunities will there be for stakeholders to contribute? What is the Minister’s response to press reports that DFID country reps will be asked to report to local UK ambassadors? Does he realise that this risks politicising DFID programmes in developing countries?

Aid should be delivered without fear or favour. One of the great achievements of DFID and the global aid community since the 1990s has been the move away from conditionality of aid and the understanding that progress towards the global goals should be separated from any specific relationship issues with country Governments. We cannot allow that to slide backwards. If the Minister sees a case for integrating DFID functions with embassies, can he have a word with his colleagues at the Home Office, who are busy stripping visa functions out of embassies, privatising them and causing chaos in their wake? Either embassies are hubs for the entirety of the UK’s presence in a country or they are not.

What reassurances can the Minister give to DFID staff about the size of the workforce and the Government’s commitment to retaining their expertise, especially, but not only, for those based in Scotland?

[Dr Lisa Cameron (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (SNP)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, given the current reports and the lack of clarification from the Ministers in charge, staff based at DFID’s East Kilbride headquarters—who are doing fantastic work in reaching the poorest people all over the world through their programmes and their specialist expertise—face an uncertain future? Does he agree that that is unfair to them, and that clarity and reassurance must be offered immediately?

[Patrick Grady]

I wholeheartedly agree, and that was the whole point of my applying for tonight’s debate. We want those assurances from the UK Government.

Let me gently remind the Government, and other Conservative Members who raised this issue earlier, that in 2014 the presence of DFID in East Kilbride was touted as one of the great benefits of the Union, and it was said that its loss would be one of the great risks of independence. As I said earlier, the independence White Paper committed us to going further than the 0.7% target, and we would have wanted to retain that global expertise. It seems that—as with so many of the promises of Better Together in 2014—following Scotland’s choice to stay part of the United Kingdom, all the supposed risks of independence are being realised in any event.

What reassurances can the Minister give to the many stakeholders, charities and non-governmental organisations, here in the UK and around the world, about the future of the funds that they currently receive from DFID? Changing or diminishing aid definitions, departmental restructuring, or any wavering of the 0.7% target will put at risk the ability of those organisations to deliver their programmes and plan for the future.

No organisation should be, or wants to be, dependent on specific grant funding, but for many organisations of which I have had personal experience, DFID grants provide a foundation that allows them to develop or expand other aspects of their work. That is particularly true of the UK Aid Match programme, which I mentioned earlier. It is not without its flaws, but it has grown in popularity in recent years. The best development results are achieved when funding is provided on a stable basis over a long period rather than being chopped and changed on a whim. Such agencies should also be allowed—even expected—to challenge and lobby Governments on all of these issues, without any fear that that will affect their ability to be awarded funds for overseas programmes.

My final question to the Minister, which I have asked several of his predecessors and will probably ask several of his successors, is this: how do the Government define the “national interest”? It has been a mantra of DFID Secretaries of State and other Ministers since 2015 that aid should work in the national interest, but when it comes to aid and development, how does the national interest differ from the global interest? In what way is achieving the global goals for sustainable development contrary, or somehow supplementary, to the national interest?

It is in all our interests to end poverty, to ensure that every child is given an education, to keep the oceans clean, and to help communities adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change. We are all part of one human family, and our own individual dignity is diminished when our poorest sisters and brothers are forced to live in a poverty that is not of their own making, so the global interest—the global vision of the sustainable development goals—must be in the UK’s national interest.

If the Government accept and recognise that, the logic follows that they must continue to meet their international obligations to aid and development through the 0.7% target, and they should deliver that through a dedicated Department for International Development. I hope very much that the Minister and his inevitable successors, in whatever shape or form, will agree.