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

Lord Bruce of Bennachie Excerpts

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

[Lord Bruce of Bennachie (LD)]

My Lords, I do not wish to respond to a speech with which I disagree entirely and which I believe is not backed up by evidence. However, I am very pleased to be able to speak on this topic in this House. I draw attention to my entry in the register of Members’ interests.

The UK’s commitment to and delivery of 0.7% has hugely enhanced our country’s standing in the world. Having had the privilege of chairing the International Development Committee for 10 years, I continue to be connected with the development sector and, having travelled extensively all across sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, I have met the recipients of UK and international aid and can say that it is well received. In many areas, it is game-changing in very positive ways; it cannot be done by blackmail or bullying but it can by engagement. Our standing among developed countries as the first and only G20 country to have delivered 0.7% has also given us considerable moral authority and leadership, not least because it is about not just the commitment to 0.7% but the quality of what we do across the piece with our aid budget.

Regarding the commitment to 0.7% causing waste, or uncontrolled or not well-monitored spending, there is not a great deal of evidence to support that. There was a problem—I say this with no degree of negativity—about the Labour Party’s commitment in government to deliver 0.7%, which I absolutely accept was genuine. The cross-party consensus was crucial. Nevertheless, it was done on a sort of hockey-stick approach: it was deferred and deferred so that once we got to the point of committing to 0.7%, a very substantial increase was required in one year. It would have been better phased in over several years and, yes, it did lead in that year to some difficulties. But none of those difficulties led to any evidence that the money was not spent effectively in delivering aid and development assistance.

We have of course now achieved the 0.7% and therefore that problem no longer arises to anything like that degree because the budget is much more predictable and the variation is much more manageable. The department is well capable of managing those fluctuations. There is of course a slight problem in the fact that government operates on a financial year and the 0.7% target is based on the calendar year, which is why there may be some variations. I do not think that anybody is concerned about a shortfall or a slight overshoot in any given year, which would require a report to Parliament, but it would be quite a different proposition if that was allowed to slip over five years.

In fact, with all respect to the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, who argued his case very cogently and consistently —I understand that—I would nevertheless regard his Bill as a Trojan horse for those who wish to see the aid programme substantially cut back and dismantled. This is not least because it is a well-known fact of our constitution that Parliaments cannot bind their successors. It would therefore be perfectly possible for a Government to slash the aid programme on the grounds that it would be the responsibility of the next Parliament in some four or five years’ time to make up the difference and do it within a legal framework. That was surely why we introduced the legislation in the first place: to ensure that the commitment was maintained, and maintained on an annual basis.

There is also an absolute right to ensure that we get value for money and that we attack corruption and waste wherever it occurs. I acknowledge the right reverend Prelate’s contention that we need to differentiate between measured outputs and long-term outcomes, which are about changing societies and creating sustainable long-term capacity and development.

The Secretary of State, who has made some quite strong pronouncements, will however need to recognise that she is constrained in what she can do—I am glad to say that she is—by both British law and international law. For example, to suggest that we can use our aid and development budget to promote trade and investment as we negotiate our way out of the European Union would simply be illegal. It would not qualify as aid and would therefore not enable us to achieve our 0.7%. Parliament has rightly imposed that constraint on successive Governments to ensure that our aid is untied, is pro-poverty reduction and is not about furthering the commercial or political interests of this country. As the noble Lord, Lord Judd, said, it is about delivering real benefits to the poorest people on the planet.

I make just one comment on the suggestion that we disengage with countries which have practices we do not like. That would be pretty well all of our aid programme going out the window. We are not a colonial power; we do not have the right to go in and say, “Our aid is conditional on you doing these things”. What we do is, first, to work with the people—all right, with the agreement of a Government—to address problems which they have and which we can assist with. In the process, we also engage in discussions about child marriage, which we have had a fantastic impact on in Ethiopia—I have seen that programme in action myself—and on FGM in many countries, where we are beginning to get traction and support those campaigning within those organisations which need the support of outside agencies to enable them to deliver real support.

Another thing is that the aid budget is already under pressure. The idea that we cannot spend this money and that there is not enough need is really not supported by any evidence whatever. There has been a massive increase in the requirement for humanitarian assistance, to which the UK has responded extremely generously, but in the process of doing that DfID has acknowledged that on occasions it has had to cut development programmes in order to support the humanitarian programme. This immediately demonstrates that there is constraint within the existing budget, which was a problem before the consequences of the referendum diminished the spending or purchasing power of our aid budget by the fall in the value of sterling. This has effectively cut the purchasing power by around 10% and in some countries by significantly more. The idea that the department somehow or other has difficulty spending money is belied by the fact that it is under pressure to ensure that it can cover all its commitments in these changing circumstances.

To those who are at all minded to support the Bill, I suggest that the idea that we should commit to 0.7% and maintain that commitment year-on-year is crucial to ensuring that the department, and those other government departments which spend ODA, have a clear framework and a budget for what they are doing. The UK should not find itself in the situation any time soon where, having achieved the 0.7% and shone out as a beacon to other countries for what we can do, we find ourselves slipping away and having to explain why our aid commitment has fallen back from 0.7%. It is interesting to note—I think I am right in this—that all those countries that have delivered the 0.7%, of which there are too few, have worked really hard to ensure that they maintain it. Some have even tried to exceed it and, in some cases, set higher targets.

Nothing should give the impression that the UK is turning its back on its commitment to be the second-largest aid donor in the world—in my view, the best in terms of what we deliver—and implying that somehow or other we were looking to our own domestic circumstances as a priority over the needs of the poorest people in the world. To quote Andrew Mitchell when he was the Secretary of State:

“We will not balance the books on the backs of the world’s poorest”.

I cannot think of anything that would compound the damage we have already done ourselves by disengaging from the European Union than suggesting that we were going to disengage from the poor people of the rest of the world. I am sorry to say to the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, that although it is not his intention, I believe that both the implication of the Bill and its practical output would have exactly that impact.