International Development (India)

Lord Bruce of Bennachie Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2012 Westminster Hall

[Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) (LD)]

It is good to initiate this debate under your chairmanship, Mr Davies, and to have the opportunity to debate the United Kingdom’s important relationship with India across a range of areas, of which development is just one key facet.

I am pleased to see one current and one former Select Committee member present. Our Committee decided to undertake a review of the UK development relationship with India against a background of critics of aid—those who either do not believe in it at all or want it cut—homing in on the India dimension as a target for demonstrating that, somehow, it was not justified. Those critics used various arguments saying that, for example, “India is a middle-income country”, “India has significant economic growth”, “India has more billionaires than the UK” and “India has a space programme”. Those are true facts, but they need to be qualified. I hope and believe that the Committee dealt with these issues constructively.

The range of income for middle-income countries is from a little more than $1,000 to $13,000. India is right at the bottom end of that spectrum and in reality Britons are 20 times richer than Indians or, put the other way round, Indians are 20 times poorer than Britons.

[Mr Virendra Sharma (Ealing, Southall) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman may agree that although India is middle-income—quite high and rising every day—at the same time it still has as many people below the poverty line as the whole of Africa. Poverty is also a major factor.

[Malcolm Bruce]

The Committee addressed that argument head-on. It is worth putting on record that the implication of their criticism is that some critics resent the fact that India has billionaires, success and growth. That is what we hope development will bring; that is the whole idea of promoting development. In reality, the UK has partnered India in a constructive way throughout a lot of different dimensions.

It is worth dwelling on the question of space for a minute. India’s supposedly extravagant space programme has absorbed $6 billion in total over 50 years, which has been used mostly to give India the capacity to launch its own satellites. A country that is a subcontinent in itself, with a border dispute with China and in Kashmir, a Maoist uprising over many years in Nepal, a civil war in Sri Lanka and problems across the region, has every reason to want information to protect its own national interest. Indeed, there are many socio-economic benefits, such as being able to monitor the path of monsoons and the impact of development. One Minister said, “If somebody comes to me and says that we have completed a school in X or Y, I can check whether that school has been built without leaving my office, because we have the benefit of these things.” That is perfectly legitimate, proper and proportionate. Developing countries should not be denied aspirations because they have to deal with poverty.

More to the point, it is a fact that in spite of this success India faces substantial challenges in terms of poverty reduction. As the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma), a former Committee member, said, there are still 350 million people in India living on less than $2 a day, which is more people in that degree of poverty than in the whole of sub-Saharan Africa.

The focus of the UK’s development programme across the piece is poverty reduction and achievement of the millennium development goals. India needs to be able to deal with those issues in spades, in a sense. It is off-track on MDG 1 on reduction of poverty and on MDG 4 on infant mortality, and badly off-track on MDG 5 on maternal mortality. In these circumstances it is, in the Committee’s view, right and proper that we determine whether the UK’s development assistance can help resolve those issues.

The Department for International Development’s operation report, drawn up since we completed our report, makes it clear that the UK regards development as part of its strategic relationship with India. We should acknowledge that we have a shared history with India, which is contentious but is a fact that has engaged both our countries for several hundred years and, if one parks the fact that they have not all been good and that there have been mistakes and memories that we would rather not have to recall, it is also true that we have achieved a depth of understanding in that relationship about culture, a common language, the same sense of humour and a shared interest in cricket.

There is a natural affinity between the two countries, which is borne out by the scale of the diaspora in the UK and the scale of trade and investment. It is interesting to note that investment between India and the UK is greater than between India and the rest of the European Union put together. These significant, positive benefits reinforce the case made by many hon. Members, who believe that the purpose of development is to deliver poverty reduction and the MDGs and, in the long term, also to create viable states that can develop economically and can and will become development, trade and investment partners. That is precisely what is happening between the UK and India.

In the press release accompanying the publication of the report, which focused on the key issue—I do not often quote myself—I said:

“The test of whether the UK should continue to give aid to India is whether that aid makes a distinct, value-added contribution to poverty reduction which would not otherwise happen. We believe most UK aid does this.”

The other issue that critics raise is that India has a responsibility, as its income rises and economic performance improves, to deliver its own poverty reduction. That is true. The fact is that India is doing a huge amount to achieve that. The transfer of wealth from the rich to the poor and the programmes on health, education and work, which are raising people out of poverty, cost tens of billions of dollars and are funded by internal resources managed through the Indian Government. By comparison, the £230 million a year of UK aid is a small amount. Is it so small that it does not matter? We concluded that, qualitatively, that aid was able to help Indian authorities and agencies achieve a faster reduction in poverty and an aspiration to deliver off-track MDGs faster than would otherwise be so and that it was, therefore, beneficial. That is also the view of the Indian Government, which is why they welcome the UK as a partner. It is clear that in these circumstances the relationship is right and proper and should continue.

We looked at DFID’s priorities to try to assess whether we believe that it matched the needs as the evidence presented to us suggested. We found, first, from objective evidence, that India is an unequal society—tackling that inequality is clearly a challenge and a responsibility for Indian politicians and Ministers—and that the contrast between the richest and poorest states is huge. Some of the poorest states in India are poorer than some of the poorest states in Africa. In that context, DFID had identified that it would concentrate a high proportion of the development in four of the poorest states in India: Bihar, which the Committee visited, Madhya Pradesh, which the Committee also visited, Orissa and West Bengal, which has changed its name to one that I cannot now recall. Those are the poorest states, where a relationship has already been established and where there is evidence that DFID’s engagement can accelerate the action to meet the challenge of reducing poverty.

One thing that shocked the Committee, although perhaps those of us who know India well should not be so shocked, was the appalling state of sanitation across large parts of India and, indeed, the acceptance of the appalling state of sanitation. Committee members were genuinely shocked by the figures: 500 million or 600 million people are practising open defecation every day, without any access to the basics of hygiene. That is one of the most fundamental problems that India has to face and one of the reasons why it is off-track on some MDGs.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I compliment the right hon. Gentleman on the report and his speech. During the Committee’s deliberations, was it aware of the disproportionate use of bad sanitation by the Dalit peoples and the discrimination against the Dalit peoples throughout the country? That leads to lower life expectancy and worse health outcomes for them than for the rest of the population.

[Malcolm Bruce]

We were, and I will come to precisely that point. I am grateful for the intervention.

Let me give hon. Members the example of a meeting that Committee members had in a village in Bihar. There was a discussion about sanitation. It was about the extent to which people there had a problem because the surface water was so badly polluted that they could not use it, so they had started drinking from wells polluted with arsenic and iron. When we got into the discussion, it became apparent that there was no shortage of surface water, but it was heavily polluted because there was no orderly way of managing sanitation. People just went to the toilet wherever they wanted to go—anywhere, anytime—and were polluting their own water supply. Indeed, some of them said, “We’re killing ourselves and one another by the way we behave.”

There was a huge divide, I have to say, between the attitude of men and the attitude of women. The women said, “The least we should do is designate certain areas for sanitation and manage them. That will enable us to have clean areas.” The men said that that was sissy, namby-pamby nonsense, that they had always done it wherever they wanted to and that that was what they should always do. It is very difficult for outsiders to get involved in that, but we did watch the argument and concluded that it showed that community-led health and education programmes were as vital as anything.

As a result, the Committee recommended that DFID give a higher priority in its programme to sanitation. We very much welcome the Government agreeing to double the resource that they will put into sanitation in the programme. To be honest, the Committee might want to go even further, but we appreciate the fact that the Government have done that. We welcome it entirely. I will not detain hon. Members by looking for the exact quote in the operational report because I do not have it to hand, but I think that I am right in saying that the expectation is that DFID’s programme will give 5.5 million or 6 million people access to proper sanitation. Proper sanitation usually means pit latrines and associated things. That is 5 million or 6 million people who do have not such sanitation now, but it still leaves about 550 million people who will not have been reached. Of course, there are other people engaged in that work, but the provision is a long way short of what is needed.

The second issue that we were especially concerned about was malnutrition. Those who follow the progress of developing countries will know that as poverty falls and incomes rise, there is a correlation with a reduction in malnutrition, especially in children. However, in India, that is not happening. There, malnutrition is decreasing at only a quarter of the normal rate. Again, there appear to be quite a lot of social awareness problems. It is customary, for example, for women to diet during pregnancy in order to have small babies, which are easier to deliver. No one points out to them that they may be small babies, but they are likely to be severely malnourished and, indeed, at risk of not surviving. It is said that the word “nutrition” and the concept of nutrition do not even translate into quite a number of indigenous local languages. We welcome the fact not only that nutrition is a target area for DFID, but that the particular target is the first 1,000 days of a child’s life, because all the evidence is that that is critical to whether children survive beyond the age of five and grow up.

The connection between the issues that I have mentioned and maternal and child health is pretty self-evident. That is clearly an important priority, because the maternal health MDG is the one that is most off-track in India. The fact that that is an area where DFID can make a contribution is extremely welcome.

I will now deal with the intervention by the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn). Social exclusion was an issue on which there absolutely was focus. It is a slightly delicate issue, but one on which DFID and the Indian Government can to some extent work to reinforce each other. It is evident that the poorest people, the people whose communities are furthest off-track in relation to MDGs, are those who are socially excluded: the Dalits and other low castes, the hill tribes and minority religious groups. When one talks to the Indian Government, they say, “Our constitution and our political drive is to include these people,” but given that, culturally, they have been excluded from the community, it is very difficult to enforce that. Sometimes it is helpful for a development partner to identify with statistics and information why the problems persist and the practical measures that could be taken to tackle them. I think that DFID has said that it will prioritise that.

The final issue, on which we would welcome an update from the Minister, was the commitment by the Government, which is entirely consistent with the idea that India is in transition out of being a development recipient to becoming perhaps a development partner, that 50% of the UK programme in India should, by the end of the programme, be targeted on private sector development. In principle, the Committee wholly supported that, because ultimately development is about generating a viable private sector that can generate a tax base, wealth and everything else to sustain the public services.

However, we were not entirely convinced as to whether DFID had any idea about how it would deliver on the target and with what partners. That is not to say that it was an illegitimate target, but I think that we are entitled to say to DFID that it needs to flesh out what it intends to do. I therefore ask the Minister these questions. How can the Government ensure that that private sector development reaches the poorest states and the poorest communities, rather than the low-hanging fruit, which are easier to reach and for which the market might deliver anyway? What might be the role of CDC in its newly revamped format; will it be part of that? What about the role of UK Trade & Investment? We discovered that it is very active in places such as Mumbai, Hyderabad and so on, but does not get to Bihar, Orissa and so on. The question is whether that needs to change.

We accepted, once we had discounted the critics, who simply want to discredit aid and development altogether, that there were legitimate issues about a country such as India, which is developing and creating substantial wealth, technology and innovation of its own, as well as having an aid and development programme. However, when we look inside that, there are two things that absolutely justify the maintenance of the partnership. What I am talking about is entirely in the spirit of the International Development Act 2002, which is focused on poverty and the MDGs.

First, the Indian Government are putting very substantial resources into redistribution and raising taxes to fund their own poverty reduction programme; and they are lifting millions of people out of poverty each year. However, the pace at which they are doing that needs to be accelerated. The UK is important as a partner less because of the resource that we are putting behind that and more because of the expertise and technical help and support, backed by resources, that we can put in. That will help to achieve a situation whereby hopefully by 2015 India will have made material progress towards eradicating poverty, the off-track MDGs will be coming back on-track and we can move from a relationship whereby India is a client state for development to one whereby we are states that are co-operating on partnership and development. Indeed, that is already happening in third countries—for example, in parts of Africa.

The Committee’s conclusion was that to have terminated the aid programme in India prematurely would have deprived millions of people in India of an opportunity to be lifted out of poverty, and Britain and India of developing a relationship that could be mutually beneficial to the poor people not just in India but in Asia, Africa and elsewhere in the world.

On that basis, I am happy to say that the Government are fundamentally right to stay in India. We have made some constructive suggestions about what the priorities should be, some of which they have accepted. We also have some questions which the Government will need to answer over time if they are to fulfil their own stated ambitious objectives.

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[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies, to follow the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Mr McCann), and to talk in a debate initiated by my right hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce), whose expertise in this field is second to none in this Parliament. Moreover, he has been an enormous help to me in my role as chair of the Liberal Democrat committee on international affairs, although I realise that today he is speaking in a less partisan role.

I also bring a little bit of personal experience to this debate. I worked for a development agency in India during the 1990s. I was seconded by Oxfam in the UK to the fledgling organisation, Oxfam India, which already had a locally registered charity and an overwhelmingly Indian staff force. Indeed, we had a Hindi slogan, milka hum garibe per pa sekte heh vijay; if my Hindi is not too rusty, that means that together we can overcome poverty. It was an important message that that was not a western import, but something that mattered to all the citizens of India. With your indulgence, Mr Davies, and because I am sure that it is within the terms of the debate, as Oxfam is a DFID partner, perhaps I may congratulate Oxfam on the 60th anniversary this year of its presence in India, and congratulate Oxfam India on its admission as a full member of Oxfam International with an Indian board and a completely Indian staff. That changing relationship is, in microcosm, an illustration of the changing relationship between Britain and India.

Traditionally, India has been the largest recipient of UK aid, and the Select Committee and many other people, as my right hon. Friend said, have raised questions about the continuing nature of Britain’s aid programme with India. India is now a middle-income country, but it still has more people living below the notional poverty line of $1.25 a day than the whole of sub-Saharan Africa. The future DFID programme will focus on many of the poorest states in India. States such as Bihar and Orissa are among the poorest in the world, and would certainly be low-income countries if they were separate nations.

On nutrition, the Select Committee’s report draws attention to some remaining alarming facts. India scored 23.7 in the 2009 global hunger index, putting it in a category where levels of hunger are considered to be alarming; it is at a level comparable to that in Burkina Faso and Zimbabwe. Almost half of Indian children are undernourished, which amounts to one third of the world’s undernourished children. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Gordon said, India is far from on track to achieve some of the millennium development goals.

Recent research by Andy Sumner of the Institute of Development Studies shows that 70% of people around the world who live below the poverty line live in middle-income countries, where income may be badly distributed, and there may be issues of equality as well as development and superficial growth. It may be attractive superficially to withdraw aid from middle-income countries, but it must be done carefully and gradually, because there are existing commitments to anti-poverty programmes, many of them involving, as my right hon. Friend said, public health, education and empowerment, and not simply providing goods and structures.

The Select Committee’s report rightly noted the scale of the Indian Government’s expenditure on things such as nuclear and space programmes, which have been controversial, but they identified them, rightly in many cases, as an essential part of India’s development. They are fundamental to India’s development of energy infrastructure, and to telecommunications infrastructure, and flood monitoring, which is a direct benefit to some of the poorest people in India. Without a satellite system and the so-called space programme, it would be difficult for India accurately to monitor the impact of flooding, and to map flood-risk areas. It may as well be criticised for developing a telephone system or solar energy. I am glad that the Select Committee agrees.

There seems to have been a large measure of agreement between the Select Committee and DFID; not only does the Committee support many of the emerging priorities for DFID, but the Government, in their response to the report, agreed with a large number of the Committee’s recommendations—the focus on poorer states, sanitation, nutrition, and the priority given to maternal and child health, social exclusion, and working with the private sector.

I heard the comments of the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow on the relationship with the private sector, but when I lived in India and worked for a development agency there, I became aware that the contribution that organisations such as Oxfam, and even Government programmes the size of DFID’s, make to poverty on a grand scale was dwarfed by the potential for the private sector to impact on people’s lives, for good or ill. There are good examples of Indian corporations such as Tata pursuing effective social responsibility programmes that are much more developed than anything we in this country tend to call corporate social responsibility. The reality of poverty is often staring them in the face every day, and the Indian corporate sector has a proud record of poverty alleviation.

At the same time, other companies go in recklessly, especially to the poorest states, and exploit natural resources without properly consulting local populations, causing immense damage, sometimes environmental, often social and often costing many lives. The biggest and most famous example is Bhopal, but there have been others on a smaller scale since. Wearing my hat as chair of the all-party group on tribal peoples, I know that some of those examples involve tribal people in states such as Orissa, where companies such as Vedanta Resources were exploiting aluminium potential through bauxite mining, and could easily have trashed the local environment that was precious to the tribal people there.

We must be cautious in our approach to the private sector, but DFID’s instincts are absolutely right, and the private sector can sometimes bring light-footedness, flexibility and imagination to development, with an overall potential that is much greater than simple Government-to-Government development aid. That high level of agreement between the Select Committee and the Government is very welcome.

[Malcolm Bruce]

It is important to note that the Committee is responsible for holding DFID to account for Parliament, and I want to make it clear to my hon. Friend that we take evidence, and we are prepared to address criticism, but that includes backing a Department—particularly when it is under attack for what it is doing—addressing some of the critics, and helping to confront some of the arguments the other way. It is not that we instinctively want the Department to work, but we have a constructively critical approach. The agreement is based on a thorough analysis of the evidence, not some sycophantic, cosy relationship. It is important that that is understood.

[Martin Horwood]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point. I did not mean to imply even that the Committee had not found fault with DFID’s programme. It has given a clear direction on things that in many cases must change, but it is welcome that the Government have accepted many of the Committee’s recommendations straightforwardly.

The Secretary of State has said that the UK is in the final mile of its aid relationship with India, and that represents an honest assessment of Britain’s maturing relationship with one of the world’s leading new powers. Increasingly, the way in which countries such as Britain will help to alleviate poverty in India is not necessarily through aid, but through fair and open trade. The European Union’s proposed free trade agreement with India—it might even be mentioned at the forthcoming European Council if we are lucky—is important.

India and Britain are allies on climate change and the ongoing United Nations framework convention on climate change, and I think both appreciate the risk to the poorest people in the world, including those in India, and the need to emphasise adaptation to climate change as well as mitigation in the international climate finance fund, and Britain’s climate finance programme. They are collaborators on international peace and security, and they have shared experience on development issues, which could be valuable to countries around the world.

The time is coming when the last vestiges of a colonial relationship should be laid gently to rest and handed over to the historians. India and the United Kingdom now need to stand side by side in the world, standing up for shared values of democracy, respect for the rule of law, and human rights, and with deep concern for the world’s poor and how to help them in practical and cost-effective ways through development assistance. Both countries have an enormous amount to teach the rest of the world about development. The eventual end of Britain’s aid programme to India, when it comes, will be a proud moment to be celebrated by both parties, but it should not be the end of the story.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development (Mr Stephen O'Brien)]

I congratulate the Chairman of the International Development Committee, the right hon. Member for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce), on securing this important debate, and I thank him for his excellent speech, which reflected the combined work of him and his Committee members. It not only focused on the India programme, but set it in a context that had a huge read-across to the justification and principles that underlie where we should place our UK effort to be partners in aid, and then to graduate to development and to securing a better future for people who have many disadvantages. His comprehensive, thorough, thoughtful and evidence-based speech got the debate off to a most respectful and useful start. Our timing happily coincides with the Foreign Secretary making, as we speak, a keynote speech to launch the King’s India Institute at King’s College, on what is India’s republic day and the 62nd anniversary of the signing of its constitution, so there is some poignancy to the debate.

Let me put the debate into context. When the coalition Government came into office in 2010, we made it clear that we wanted to build a different style of international development, one based on dynamic partnerships that reflected our networked world and focused on a relentless pursuit of results and value for money in the Department for International Development’s work. Our vision acknowledges the prominence and value of Britain’s involvement in the alliances on development that were so important in the past, but also looks to the relationships and international forces that will shape the future.

Engagement with the emerging powers is a cornerstone of the policy, as the Secretary of State for International Development set out in a speech at Chatham House in February last year. I am sure that Members will have noted, as did the Secretary of State in that speech, that in the space of a few short decades the world has become a very different place. Whether we are talking about the BRIC countries—Brazil, Russia, India and China—the Asian dragons, the tiger economies or the gulf giants, the new powers will influence world affairs in the future, and it is therefore in our interests to engage with them now.

Of all the emerging powers, it is India with which we will have the most multidimensional relationship and partnership. Our shared history, and political and personal links, all mean that India is important to the United Kingdom, and the Prime Minister’s visit so soon after the election in 2010 reflected the importance we attach to the relationship.

As the right hon. Member for Gordon is aware, in the last year we have completed a root-and-branch review of the aid programme to ensure that our spend is targeted where it can achieve the greatest results. The review made it clear that we can achieve real results for poor people in India. Why? Because the Indian Government are ploughing record tax revenues into poverty reduction programmes, and in that environment, our development expertise can ensure that the impact of those resources is maximised for the benefit of the poorest in Indian society. Indeed, we estimate that the United Kingdom’s aid has lifted 2.3 million people out of poverty in rural India in the past five years and put an additional 1.2 million Indian children into primary school since 2003, demonstrating that there has been a succession of Administrations with a shared responsibility.

The value of these efforts received cross-party endorsement when the International Development Committee completed its assessment of the UK’s development programme in India and concurred with our decision to continue our funding until 2015. I recognise the right hon. Gentleman’s perfectly legitimate, well-articulated and constructive criticism, and his constructive approach to holding a Department of State to account—through his Select Committee, in this case—and I hope it is noted that DFID delayed finalising the 2011 to 2015 operational plan for India until after his Committee had made its recommendations. We were then able to take the recommendations into account before publishing the operational plan on the DFID website in October 2011.

The pace of India’s transformation to date has been remarkable, as hon. Members have noted. Although economic growth has slowed in recent months, India is still achieving enviable rates of growth—rates we would give our eye teeth for—lifting 15 million people out of poverty every year. But we know that the benefits of the growth are not being shared equally and the scale of Indian poverty remains massive. India’s poorest states—each of them larger than most African countries, as has been well noted—still face huge development challenges. More than half the girls in Madhya Pradesh do not yet go to secondary school, more than half the young children in Bihar are undernourished, and one quarter of all pregnancies are unwanted or mistimed.

Our decision to maintain our programme in India was coupled with a very clear conviction, well picked up by the Select Committee, that the programme should also be radically different. Because of India’s economic growth and its own increasing resources, we are bringing the development partnership up to date. Since the publication of the International Development Committee’s report on the future of aid to India, we have agreed a new approach with the Government of India, and I think that the right hon. Member for Gordon importantly wanted to ensure that that had happened.

The approach has three main pillars. The first is an innovative new private sector programme, using returnable capital to promote pro-poor private investment in India’s poorest states. Rather than just read out the bullet points, I will give a bit more detail, to pick up on some of the points raised, particularly by the hon. Members for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Mr McCann) and for Brent North (Barry Gardiner). It is in the interests of the poor and the UK taxpayer that resources are used sparingly and only where most needed, attracting private capital where possible, but it makes good value-for-money sense, and it is certainly good for poverty reduction, to use our resources over and over again if we can. So the answer is yes, the resources will be reapplied for India. I say “if we can,” because we must ensure that we preserve at all times the ability to apply rigour.

[Malcolm Bruce]

Is my hon. Friend able to say what the CDC’s role will be? The CDC is being revamped, and it seems that some of this returnable kind of capital would be appropriately delivered through that body. Is there an active dialogue between DFID and the CDC about how the private sector funding will develop in India?

[Mr O'Brien]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a very important point. In many degrees, this is a question of a stratified approach. It is really to do with the risk appetites and the profile of the funding instruments that lie behind it. I can certainly confirm that we hope that the revamped CDC will be able to take a greater interest in applying its patient capital approach, particularly to some of the infrastructure support that lies behind economic development, not least in the poorest states. But let us be absolutely clear, with the DFID instruments, we are able to put forward the funding that we do because our capital can take bigger risks in riskier places than even that of the CDC. We have to recognise that there is a connection, but not necessarily an overlap.

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[Mr O'Brien]

I hope that I will have enough time to answer that question. I have a great slug of information to add on the private sector but, given the topic of the debate, I want specifically to cover the recommendations of the IDC’s report. The IDC has made a valuable contribution to the new shape of our programme in India and its recommendations encompass the points highlighted by the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali).

As the Committee noted, UK aid matters in the poorest states, where there are the fewest donors and where growth has not yet made a significant impact on poverty. We are therefore focusing on those poorest states, and we will help states access India’s own resources, improve the environment for business and investment, make sure that the public get a better deal from public services, improve financial procedures and reduce corruption.

We have taken note of the Committee’s recommendation to concentrate more resources on needy sectors, and we plan to double our support—this is an important point, first raised by the Chairman of the Committee—for water and sanitation over the next four years, giving 5 million people access to better sanitation. We want to increase the amount of burden-share that others may assist us with, but let us be clear that, through community approaches, for every pound we spend on sanitation, we expect Government partners to spend approximately £20. We are piloting community-led total sanitation in Bihar and, assuming that it proves effective, will roll it out.

The Prime Minister of India recently described child malnutrition—another point raised by the Committee Chairman—as a national shame. Over the next four years, DFID aims to reach more than 3 million children through nutrition programmes, including—not least over the first 1,000 days and with the Governments of Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Odisha—a programme on child-feeding, micronutrient supplements and diarrhoea management. Trained community health workers are very much part of that programme. Our energies are focused on delivering the results expected of our programmes. For instance, 447,000 births between 2011 and 2015 will be delivered with the help of nurses, midwives and doctors in those three states, but it is too early to finalise our plans for post-2015.

I appreciate the interest of the Committee, but let us be clear that we will not be in India in a development relationship for ever. Our aim over time is to move from an aid-based relationship to one based on shared contributions to global development issues, not least climate change.

[Malcolm Bruce]

Will the Minister acknowledge that, according to our discussions with the Indian Government, they themselves see the relationship changing and coming to an end? It is not just a decision for the United Kingdom Government; it will be a joint decision between the UK and the Indian Government.

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[Malcolm Bruce]

I thank all hon. Members who have contributed to the debate, which has been extremely positive and constructive. The Committee’s mood and the Minister’s response is that we are working in partnership with the Government and the people of India. Indeed, what we are doing, we are doing together and in full participation. The fundamental concern and objective is to ensure that the poorest of the poor people in India get the support that they need to stop being poor as fast as possible. The UK’s ability to accelerate that process will be the most positive measure and judgment of our engagement.