Queen’s Speech

Lord Bishop of Lichfield Excerpts

Thursday 17th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Lichfield]

My Lords, Ascension Day is a good time to focus on international development because the Ascension marks the moment when Christ’s command to care for our neighbour becomes universal, crossing all geographical and tribal boundaries.

For some years, the millennium development goals have eluded our grasp. Successive Governments have discovered that without a financial commitment these goals, though widely welcomed, could prove unreachable. It was one of Gordon Brown’s great achievements to commit the then Government to 0.7% of our gross national income in aid by 2013. At the last general election, all three parties made the commitment to enshrine this international target in law. The Government reaffirmed this commitment in the March Budget, meaning that the UK will meet this long-standing international commitment for the first time in 2013. The UK will be the first G8 country to have achieved this target. Given the current state of the economy, this is a remarkable achievement.

Naturally there has been some lobbying from the development agencies. They are worried that the lack of draft legislation might mean uncertainty for the poor throughout the next parliamentary timetable. However, the Government’s commitment is clear and to be welcomed. In April, the Secretary of State for International Development wrote to the heads of UK aid agencies, saying:

“The Coalition Government’s ‘Programme for Government’ also made clear that it would enshrine the 0.7% in law”.

So why the lack of any draft legislation?

The Economic Affairs Committee of your Lordships’ House recommended in March that the Government should drop their commitment to 0.7% being spent on overseas aid from 2013. Its report warned of the risk of skimping on value for money and accountability. We all have horror stories of money that has been given and then misused. A friend of mine runs a charity called Operation Sunshine that takes container-loads of useful goods to people in one of the poorest spots in the world. At present all the containers are being held up by bureaucratic customs officers in the receiving country and no one seems able to shift them. I also remember contributing to a fund seeking to buy a bike for every pastor in an extremely poor diocese. All went well until we heard that the bishop had absconded to the US with all the proceeds.

However, for every occasion like that, most of us have dozens or even scores of stories of wonderfully creative ways in which aid has been used to transform lives. A Lent project in my Midlands diocese has produced enough money to enable young people in a very poor African township to go for higher education. All of us who go out there from Lichfield reckon that we in the still-rich West are the ones who gain the most from these twinnings. If that is so in our small church-led projects, surely it can also be so in the use of much larger intergovernmental schemes.

Next year the UK takes over the chair of the G8. With the UK in the international spotlight, 2013 is a vital year for Britain to demonstrate leadership in the fight against extreme poverty. Perhaps it is as well to recognise that aid is only one dimension of our struggle to prevent famine, infant death and all the other millennium targets. The parable of Dives and Lazarus reminds us that when the difference between rich and poor gets to a certain point it makes God angry and that poverty arising from injustice is structural and cannot be rectified by charitable giving alone.

The churches have been cautious about legislating for what are essentially moral commitments, but in recent years they have found themselves moving beyond the aid debate to look at the broader question of tax justice. For example, Christian Aid estimates that developing countries lose approximately $160 billion a year to tax avoidance by multinationals. It is exciting that the Government’s decision to meet the 0.7% spending commitment next year means that a modest proportion, about a penny ha’penny, of every pound the Government spend will be on aid. This has the potential to put nearly 16 million children in school, provide more than 80 million children with vaccines, save the lives of 50,000 mothers and provide better nutrition for nearly 10 million people.

It is therefore a little disappointing that parliamentary time has not been made available to do what has been promised, and it would be good to hear why from the Minister. I am sure that there are many noble Lords who would welcome reassurance that parliamentary time will be made available before the next election. To enshrine this commitment in law would create an excellent platform for the Government when it comes to talking about trade, immigration, environmental protection, corruption, peacekeeping and global security. It has been well said that we dare not build our own economic recovery on the backs of the global poor.