International Development White Paper

Lisa Nandy Excerpts

Tuesday 21st November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for his statement, for advance sight of the White Paper, and for our frequent conversations about it since I was appointed to my post.

The catastrophe in Gaza is a strong reminder not just of the need for humanitarian assistance and expertise, but of the heavy responsibility that we all face to play our part in the world through the painstaking hard yards of diplomacy, and of the crucial role of development in providing the hope that breathes life into any peace process. I thank the Minister for his personal efforts to bring some energy and direction to this agenda again. In fact, I would go as far as saying that I do not believe that the House would be in a position to consider a new White Paper were he not in post—a view that I think is shared by many on the Opposition Benches.

However, to have an honest conversation about where we are heading, we need a frank assessment of where we have been. There was the mindless vandalism of the decision to take one of our most respected, influential contributions to the world—the partnerships, thought leadership and innovation—and trash the lot to deflect from a domestic crisis. There was the former Prime Minister who, shamed by a young footballer into abandoning his decision to allow children to go hungry in a pandemic, pulled the rug out from under the poorest people in the poorest countries. Make no mistake: that cost lives, but it also cost Britain its reputation as a gold-standard leader in the field. As the Minister said then, it was

“a strategic mistake with deadly consequences.”—[Official Report, 2 March 2021; Vol. 690, c. 118.]

He knows that I admire his determination to speak out against those decisions, and I know that he does not shy away from acknowledging the damage that they have done.

Although the former Prime Minister may be gone, his second in command, whose signature is scrawled across those documents, now sits in No. 10. His short words at the start of the White Paper leave me in no doubt that, although his posture has changed, his position has not. Frankly, asking the man who signed off the devastation of this vital agenda, only to breathe new life into it again, is like calling out the arsonist to put out the fire. For much of the agenda that the Minister set out today, he will have our support. The question is whether he will have that of his Prime Minister.

The Minister is right to recognise that the major obstacle to eliminating extreme poverty is the growing challenge of climate change and debt, but the key is how to resolve it. The multilateral system is strained—much of the world’s debt is owed to private creditors, and over recent decades China’s influence has grown—so we strongly welcome the recognition in the White Paper that Britain’s approach to development must sit in a multipolar world. However, multilateral aid will fall to just 25% of aid spending by 2025. Although the commitments in this White Paper are welcome, the Minister is prioritising multilateralism while his Department prioritises bilateralism. Which is it? We have a strategy at odds with the ambition.

The second problem is that to make the strategy work, the Minister will need to convince the world that Britain is a long-term reliable partner with serious commitment at the highest levels of Government, yet his own White Paper is silent on protecting the overseas development assistance budget from raids from other Departments, after 30% has been raided in the past year by the Home Office alone to pay for spiralling hotel bills and the cost of this Government’s chaos. What chance does he have of convincing the world that this area is a priority for the Government if he cannot convince his colleagues around the Cabinet table? I suspect that on the central issue—the need to deal with debt and finance constraints that block action on climate—he and I have more in common than he does with most of them.

There is much to welcome in the White Paper, but access to finance for many of the most heavily indebted countries is ultimately unachievable. He is embracing some of the new ideas on finance, but when it comes to the central issue of debt, where is the fresh thinking? The outsized role of the City of London compels us to do more. Now is the time not to cling to existing strategies, but to leave no stone unturned.

The problem of climate finance and debt for middle-income countries enables us to focus on low-income countries and the core task of eliminating extreme poverty, but there is far too little in the White Paper about how that can be achieved. We welcome the focus on conflict, but the route out of poverty lies not just in access to finance and in functioning economies, but in self-sustaining health, education and welfare systems designed and run by the people in those countries. What can he do to reassure the House that that is not a second-order issue?

Finally, the Minister and I have discussed the central importance of women and girls many times. They have been among the biggest losers of the decisions of recent decades. Empowering them is the biggest untapped driver of growth in the global economy, and there is no way of meeting the sustainable development goals without closing that shameful gap. That is why they must run like a thread through the whole agenda—not just in addition to it, and not a few pages in a document. Every single decision that comes across his desk must consider whether it does more to empower and enable women and girls to succeed, or less.

I welcome and support the Minister’s commitment to this agenda, but without the political backing, without the budget and without the priority in Government, he will not succeed. He is far more alive to the scale and nature of the problems that Britain and the world face than most of his colleagues, but the challenges of this era demand an end to old ways of thinking and an embracing of the new. I know he is open to it, but are his Government?

[Mr Mitchell]

I thank the hon. Lady for her co-operation and her kind personal remarks. She will know that, in order to get buy-in from our friends and experts around the world and from the civil service, the White Paper needed to run to 2030. In the unlikely event that my party is not in government after the next election, any other Government would, I hope, build on it to make it a huge success.

I note the hon. Lady’s remarks about the merger of DFID into the Foreign Office. My task, which the Prime Minister gave me, was to try to make the merger work. That means there needs to be an ability within Government to focus on global public goods and delivering them into the 2030s. That is what I am trying to do. She rightly asks how we get the balance right between multilateralism and bilateral funding. The answer is that we use either, depending on what delivers for our taxpayers and what delivers results on the ground. That is the yardstick; there is no ideology. We go with what works and what is best.

The hon. Lady pointed out the increase in spending in other Departments of ODA money and the development budget. It is true that that has gone up, but every penny is spent within the rules laid down by the OECD Development Assistance Committee. We brought in the innovation of the ODA star chamber in Whitehall, co-chaired by the Development Minister and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. There is already clear evidence of that ratcheting up the quality of ODA, as the hon. Lady would wish.

The hon. Lady talked about access to finance for poor countries, which is incredibly important. Mitigation projects in middle-income countries are easy by contrast; when it comes to poor countries and adaptation, it is much more difficult. She will see the emphasis in the White Paper on accepting the advice from the Select Committee on increasing the amount that British International Investment does in poor countries. She will notice, too, the emphasis on social protection, and the fact that 62% of the budget will now be spent in fragile and conflict states.

Finally, the hon. Lady asked about debt, where she is right that we need to do far more. It is absurd that a country such as Ghana can borrow only for seven or eight years, yet our children can get mortgages for 30 years. Ghana borrows at 7%, and our children borrow at 2%. That is clearly completely wrong, but there is a lot of new thinking. She will have seen the climate resilient debt clauses launched by Britain and the work we are doing on the G20 common framework to increase access for countries. It is also important to ensure that the private sector is bound into debt settlements when they affect sovereign states.