Queen’s Speech

Lord Bruce of Bennachie Excerpts

Thursday 22nd June 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bruce of Bennachie (LD)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Luce, that it is a daunting task to sum up a debate with so many contributions which range, literally, over the whole globe—and indeed I will have to cherry pick. I would also like to confirm two things. First, understandably, because of everything that has happened in the last few weeks, the mood of the House is sombre. Indeed, in his opening speech, the noble Earl, Lord Howe, talked about a darkening international situation which we have to confront. Secondly, I echo what many noble Lords said about how welcome it is to see the noble Earl, Lord Howe, opening the debate and the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, replying to it in his new role—we look forward to hearing from him. We are very pleased to have two Ministers who engage so well with the House. In his opening remarks the noble Earl, Lord Howe, also said that the commitment to spending 2% on defence and 0.7% on development assistance is a crucial part of how we might address this darkening atmosphere, and I think he was right to say so. Most of my remarks will focus on international development-related issues, although there are a couple of other things as well.

The noble Earl mentioned the strengthening capacity of our international trade department. I would simply say that I think we should all be fairly cautious on two grounds. First, we keep telling ourselves that we are a great trading nation. However, the trade seems to be more in one direction than the other. We have a historically huge balance of payments deficit. That has not happened because we are a member of the European Union, because other members of the European Union have managed to operate within the Union and create a surplus. The reality is that we are a nation of small businesses, and exporting is difficult and challenging unless there is a huge amount of resource and support. I therefore hope that these new people in the trade ministry will be able to give small and medium-sized businesses the practical reality to enable them to trade and export, because for many of them the risks are just too great in the present climate.

The noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, made the point that in his time in the House he has seen a welcome increase in the number of contributions and discussions on the role and importance of international development, and that has certainly been true of today’s debate. The role of the Commonwealth has also featured very strongly and that is welcome.

I want to make a point about trade before I come to speak in detail about development. I happen to be the president of the Caribbean Council, which is made up of business associations promoting relationships between the UK and the Caribbean. I know from my discussions with Caribbean countries that they are really concerned about the consequences of Brexit, the implications of the loss of EPAs with the UK—if that happens—and possible trade deals that we form with countries such as Brazil and the United States, which could disadvantage them compared with their current preferential arrangements. They are seeking assurances that the United Kingdom, in its desire to get trade deals with Brazil or the United States, will not forget the needs of weaker and more vulnerable partners in the Caribbean, with whom we have traditionally had very good relationships. I think that they would want that to be put on the record.

I have put in the register of Members’ interests my connections with international development, which go back quite a long way, and I look for a number of commitments from the Minister. Having welcomed the 0.7% contribution, quite a lot of colleagues, including the noble Lord, Lord Collins, at the beginning of the debate, have also expressed concern about the Government’s desire or intention to try to change the terms or definition of official development assistance. I hope that that will not happen but I also suggest to the Government that, with all the challenges of Brexit, this does not seem to be the right moment to open discussions with other members of the OECD about how to redefine aid in a way that I think suits the Conservative Party as a majority Government but not as a minority Government. It would be good to have an assurance that aid will be spent on poverty reduction and in conformity with current agreements and our own domestic laws, which require it to be poverty focused and untied.

What will happen to our relationship as regards aid spending and our partnerships with the European Union, accounting for £1.3 billion? Again, a number of noble Lords raised this. I understand that the European Union has said that it wants this to continue. Of course, people might say, “What wouldn’t they? It’s 15% of their budget that they are going to lose”. I get that point, but it is also true that our own multilateral review assessed our European partnerships and the European agencies as “excellent”, “outstanding” or “very good”. The logic of that is that we should be able to find a way of continuing to work with the European Union on development co-operation, and it would be good to hear whether the Government have a positive view about taking that forward. Obviously, there must be agreement on the broad principles that would enable that to happen.

The role of DfID—this is a term it uses itself—is a “commissioning agency” for aid and development. There is an existing partnership. I think that my noble friend Lady Sheehan and the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, mentioned the ODI report, which pointed out that the UK has a huge capacity to deliver aid through the budget provided by DfID and through the policy framework, with accountability, but it is the partnerships with a whole variety of partnering contractors—whether NGOs, private contractors, hybrid organisations or think tanks and so on—that provide real benefit to the UK and help us to be world-beaters, and it is helpful for DfID to acknowledge that.

One organisation with which I have an involvement is the Start Network—a consortium of international NGOs that deliver low-visibility humanitarian responses at a very early stage. They are there before the United Nations and other big organisations have the chance to respond. A recent example of its work was in the DRC, where there was an outbreak of Ebola. It was able to mobilise very quickly through the Alliance for International Medical Action and get people on the ground. It was able to train eight Ministry of Health staff, arrange 58 community relays for awareness and chlorination activities, brief 20 political and administrative authorities, and reach 2,726 people with health advice about how to avoid the disease. This was all done in a matter of days and in a very small number of weeks. It demonstrates what can be done with this kind of partnership. It is very substantially funded by DfID, but it is also supported by the Netherlands, Ireland, Estonia, ECHO and, soon, by Belgium. This kind of partnership is extremely valuable.

Another thing worth mentioning is that the critics of aid do not let go. I do not know how many noble Lords saw this piece in the Daily Mail earlier this week:

“Minister in denial over aid scandals … Seven Daily Mail stories that she could not refute”.


I very much welcome Priti Patel’s defence of her department in the face of these criticisms and her challenge to the media, saying that most of their stories were not accurate. I do not think she needs to refute them, but I could easily pick up a couple of them.

One example the Daily Mail complains about is the amount of cash payments distributed through our aid budget. These programmes have been tried and tested and are the preferred and most effective mechanism for dealing with crises by most international aid donors. The Mail complains that recipients can spend these payments “at will” and has a picture of a queue of people at an ATM. That is of course true, but the evidence shows that people on the edge of survival prioritise food and health when they are given money. It is the most effective way of getting it. Rather than shipping US grain to Africa and paying shippers a huge amount of aid money to get it there, it is much more effective to have the money used to buy services and food locally and help the local economy. I suspect that the Daily Mail probably thinks that the DWP should do this because, after all, all this money is going to feckless, undeserving poor, which seems to be the fundamental attitude of that particular organ.

The Daily Mail also complains that DfID has the highest-paid civil servants. It is a very small department, so I suspect it is a mean figure of £53,000 a year. However, if you are critical of aid being spent in difficult and challenging environments, would you not want highly paid civil servants to make sure that it is well spent? I am glad to say, as the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury said, that DfID staff work hard and with huge dedication around the world. They are indeed recognised as having done so, in very difficult and anti-social circumstances and conditions.

This has been a debate in the context of Brexit, which will be discussed at the end of next week, but also of our struggling to redefine our relationship with the rest the world. An awful lot will have to happen in the next two to three years before that becomes clear, but one thing that has united the House is that we have something to be proud of in our international engagement, our commitment to 0.7%, our strong defence capacity and a recognition that we have to be engaged with the world and not turn our back on it. That is the flavour that has come out of the debate.