Government Overseas Aid Commitment: Private Investment

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

Tuesday 9th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I think that only one in five high-net-worth individuals invests in ethical businesses, and businesses that will help us to deliver the global goals. We must do more if we are to deliver those goals, and we want to explore how we can help that to happen.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

This morning, I searched in vain for any content in the Secretary of State’s leadership bid—I mean, her speech. The only content that I found was the statement that she was going to start a national conversation. Her party has only just successfully lobbied the OECD to change the rules to allow the billions invested in CDC to be counted as aid upfront, and now she says that she wants another change. May I, for the purpose of clarity, ask whether, if the Government have invested £1 in CDC and it recirculates two or three times, she counts that once as £1 from the Treasury, or counts it three, four, five, six times and pats herself on the back while reducing the 0.7%? Will she commit herself to the 0.7% as a floor and not a cap?

[Penny Mordaunt]

Let me reiterate that it is this Government who introduced the 0.7%. [Interruption.] We introduced it, and we have kept it. I am sure that Opposition Members have not read the speech that I made today—if they had, they would know that the thrust of it was about levering more in.

What we are trying to do has nothing to do with some doctrine of the purity of aid, or what we should do with public money. It is about changing people’s lives and about saving lives, and this is about our ability to deliver what is needed for us to do that. Because we are capitalising those investment vehicles, we are currently choosing to deal with ODA in one way. We argued for that, and we have agreement to do that. [Interruption.] What I am saying is that in future years, if we want to do more of this—if we want to make our aid budget more sustainable—we should explore these options now. We should do that in consultation with the people whose money we are spending, the British taxpayers, and in consultation with the organisations that are investing their savings and pensions. Otherwise, folks, we are not going to deliver the global goals, which is what we are here to do.