International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) (Amendment) Bill [HL]

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 18th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I warmly support this Bill, because I think it is sensible and right. I believe that the current law is an ass and is typical of the bad law we get when we go in for tokenistic measures—things such as the Dangerous Dogs Act. Leaving aside my personal view that spending 0.7% of our GDP on overseas aid is a waste of money which could be better spent elsewhere, I accept that if the country and the Government are determined to spend 0.7% then none of it should be wasted, and I believe that a large part of it is being wasted.

One of the most telling speeches I heard in this House on this matter came from a former Permanent Secretary on the Cross Benches when the last Bill was being passed. It may have been the noble Lord, Lord Butler, but I am not sure. Whoever it was, he said that he strongly supported the 0.7% target but that it was sheer folly to lay down a legal requirement that the department had to spend every penny of it in each year and was not permitted any carry-over. He said that, inevitably, in January, February and March, as the financial year ended, the Government would throw money at any old rubbish just so that they did not break the law by underspending. I paraphrase slightly—the noble Lord would not have used the phrase “any old rubbish”, but I think that that is what he intended.

As a matter of general principle, is there anything more insane or wicked for the taxpayer than that the Government would break the law if they did not waste enough taxpayers’ money by a certain date? This Bill is the law we should have had if we want to implement a compulsory 0.7% target, or any target. We have all seen it in local government, where there is a silly, wasteful spending spree in March because the Government —all Governments—will not let councils carry over unspent money into the next financial year. Therefore, setting a five-year window to complete the expenditure is infinitely preferable to a 12-month window. I would have preferred something like a permitted 5% carry-over each year so that projects with, say, a three to five-year lifespan would have flexibility as to when they spend the cash. I sincerely hope my noble friend the Minister will state today that this Bill will become government policy and the Government will implement it in due course. I often live in hope.

Turning to other related matters of overseas aid—I am afraid your Lordships will find even less favour with these remarks—as I said earlier, I accept that we may need to spend 0.7% on aid but that means that not one penny should be wasted on undeserving countries or projects. I greatly admire my right honourable friend Priti Patel for the stance she is taking on waste in overseas aid projects. However, I suspect that she is up against a huge, elitist development cabal of all the NGOs and those who make millions from managing projects, which will seek to defeat her.

When one looks at some of the outrageous things that have been funded, it is easy to pick out examples of appalling waste. But in my view there is an even bigger racket: the multimillion-pound organisations which bid for contracts to manage the disbursement of aid projects. They are brilliant operators. They tick all the boxes in the DflD forms—they are non-misogynist, transgender, equal-opportunities, anti-smoking, huggy, squeezy feminist liberals—and then go on to rip off the department in the way they manage the projects. I hope that in due course my right honourable friend may be able to purge these companies from the aid disbursement list.

Despite criticism of some of the waste, I accept that DfID has a far better track record of spending money on the most deserving poor than any other organisation on earth, particularly the EU. I hope that on Brexit day plus one the British Government will devote all the money they are giving to the EU to British-run overseas aid projects.

Now we come to what I consider some thoroughly undeserving countries. This House has rightly condemned FGM. I dislike that term since I consider it a bit of a euphemism. It is the brutal torture of young girls. It is vile and it is evil. Nevertheless, in February 2016 I asked DfID,

“which countries where female genital mutilation is known or suspected to be practised widely receive UK overseas aid”.

The Government responded a week later by saying:

“Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is one of the most extreme manifestations of gender inequality. It is a form of violence against women and girls and can result in a lifetime of physical, psychological and emotional suffering. It is a global problem—over 200 million women and girls across at least 30 countries, including the UK, have been cut. The UK Government remains firmly committed to bringing about an end of FGM. Our Flagship FGM programme supports efforts to end the practice in 17 of the highest burden of these countries. With the support from UK aid over 13,500 communities across these countries have publically declared the abandonment of FGM since 2008”.

So I then asked,

“which 17 countries their Flagship female genital mutilation (FGM) programme supports, how much aid each of those countries receives annually from the UK, and how much aid from the UK is spent annually on programmes to end female genital mutilation in those countries”.

DfID’s Answer was:

“DFID’s regional FGM programme is providing up to £35 million in funding to end FGM in 17 high prevalence countries: Burkina Faso, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Mauritania, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Somalia, Sudan, Uganda and Yemen. This funding is apportioned over a five year period from 2013-2018 and the breakdown by country is not readily available. Six of these countries (Kenya, Nigeria, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen and Uganda) have DFID country programmes”.

I looked to see what the funding for those six countries was. Last year, according to the DflD report, we gave Ethiopia almost £400 million, Nigeria £263 million, Sudan £208 million, Kenya £156 million and Uganda £123 million. These five countries alone got £1.15 billion in aid and they are among the worst offenders perpetrating the evil of FGM. As a sop, we have offered up to £35 million if they would please, please not do quite so much FGM in future. I am sorry but if I was a politician in one of those countries why on earth would I bother bidding for a bit of that £35 million when the British Government will continue to throw £300 million at me even if I do not bother doing a thing? If we mean to stamp out FGM in those countries, we must make it clear to all aid-taking countries: stop the torture of girls or no more money, or considerably less money.

Then there is another gross iniquity: giving money to wealthy countries and those that have space and nuclear programmes. I would like my noble friend the Minister to explain the articles in this week’s press that we are still giving money to India and China. There was some suggestion that that was not correct and that it was some sort of fancy trade and development deal, with which I might be slightly happier, but I thought that we were not allowed to link trade to aid. I am sure that my noble friend has a brief on this and I look forward to hearing the explanation.

I am relaxed about aid to India because it is not hostile to this country but the same cannot be said of Pakistan. It is a nuclear power, it has a massive army and—I say this very carefully—it is a potential force for evil in the world. Let me justify that: we have been engaged in war in Afghanistan and Iraq but we have never had a single terrorist from those countries. Over 90% of our terrorists have come from Pakistan or from Pakistani heritage. They have been indoctrinated in madrassahs, largely funded by Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan is the breeding ground for most Islamic fundamentalist terrorists in the world.

In the past few years I have had the privilege of meeting two US generals who commanded in Afghanistan and they both said—in a guarded, political way—that Pakistan was the real enemy supporting the Taliban, aided and abetted by the Pakistani Government’s Inter-Services Intelligence, the ISI. They regarded Pakistan as a failed, pariah state. Our Government say that they are targeting aid to the poorest countries and there is no doubt that millions in Pakistan are in poverty. But much of that poverty is because of corruption and expenditure of almost $3 billion on Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme. Is it our moral duty to feed Pakistan’s poor when their own Government starve them by not spending that $3 billion on them?

I ask my noble friend the Minister—but I know that he dare not answer if he wishes to remain in post—why do we give every year the massive sum of £400 million to a country that is a major nuclear power, practises FGM, murders its own politicians who defend other religions, persecutes Christians, is corrupt and is the breeding ground for terrorism in the UK? Those are a few simple questions but I know that my noble friend dare not comment.

Finally—your Lordships will be relieved to hear—if we are going to spend that money, whether over one year or five, let us have a slightly wider definition of what constitutes overseas aid. If the Royal Navy is engaged in picking up migrants in the Mediterranean and rescuing them, that should come out of the overseas aid budget because that is what it is. If we have to build a wall in Calais and provide for other camps, the cost of bringing in the migrants should also be paid out of the aid budget. If we are going to bring in the refugees and economic migrants, the cost to British local authorities should also be paid out of the overseas aid budget. Of course, these issues are not germane to this Bill but this is the only vehicle I have seen in the past few months where I could make these comments, which I know are not acceptable to the majority.

Going back to the core point, I hope I have not severely damaged the noble Lord’s Bill—I probably have—by commenting on it favourably; in fact, I know I have. It was not my intention to wreck this Bill with my comments. It is a sensible Bill, which allows us to spend the money more wisely, whether it is 0.7% or even 1%. The Bill deserves to pass and I wish it well.