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

Lord Collins of Highbury Excerpts

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

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lord Lipsey for putting forward today’s Bill. He has initiated an incredibly positive debate on the importance of development and aid. I respect my noble friend’s principled position; he is in favour of aid, but he is concerned that the rigidity of the target will lead to wasteful spending and therefore bring the budget into disrepute with an already sceptical public. It is right that we address those issues. We have to make the case—we cannot take anything for granted, particularly given some of the things that are happening in our world. Value for money is a vital ingredient of this debate, and we should not forget that.

My noble friend acknowledges that this is indeed a rerun of part of the debate on the 0.7% Bill, which is now of course an Act. His amendments then would have had the same effect as this Bill but, he argues, this replay is under very different conditions. He focused on changes to political leadership in the expectation that it could lead to a weakening of the 0.7% commitment. Yet, following the much-reported speech at the Conservative Party conference, the new Secretary of State Priti Patel said:

“Meeting the 0.7 per cent target for overseas aid is a manifesto commitment. It is enshrined in law and the Government has been unequivocal that we will continue to honour that promise”.

Good—we need to repeat that. We also need to remember that legislating for the 0.7% target featured in all three manifestos at the 2010 election, so we have a very broad political consensus for the principle.

As my noble friend Lord Judd said, development is about tackling the imbalance of power, politically, economically and socially. Value for money means measuring success by the change we make, not simply the cash we put in. My two noble friends mentioned the March 2012 report from your Lordships’ Economic Affairs Committee, which questioned the effectiveness of the targets, saying that,

“the speed of the planned increase risks reducing the quality, value for money and accountability of the aid programme”.

I agree that we need to understand that risk; as the aid budget increases, so must our ability to control it. That is why we strongly support, as I know all noble Lords do, the Independent Commission for Aid Impact. Value for money should mean maximising the impact we make; when a budget as important as this is ring-fenced, there is a fiscal responsibility and a moral duty to deliver as much change as possible for the money we invest. That sort of value for money is crucial.

As we have heard in this debate, development is also in Britain’s interests. Britain invests in development to prevent extreme poverty, climate change and conflict. Retreating from that responsibility one way or another will still carry a cost; the way to eliminate that cost is to tackle it at source. The UK would be much better off growing and trading with a strong global economy, with a sustainable climate, supportive Governments and secure borders. That is what British development helps to achieve; tackling those big global issues can save us billions in future.

The world that we live in is a rapidly changing one. Defence, diplomacy and development are the combined necessary ingredients of securing the peaceful world we all desire. In promoting the Bill, my noble friend repeats the argument that increased flexibility in respect of the one-year programme will avert the danger that the money will be rushed out to hit the target in one year, and there will not be enough to hit the target so easily the following year. As noble Lords have said, the target has now been met for the third year—and I hope that, when we reach Committee, we can address the issue of evidence. Where is the evidence of this rush? Where is the evidence of waste, bearing in mind the elements of scrutiny that we now have, to which the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, rightly drew our attention?

I agreed strongly with the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson, when she repeated her commitment to the 0.7% target and said that she feared that any loosening of that commitment could be the thin end of the wedge. I agree with her; we have to see this commitment as a political one that binds us to the future, that is about changing the world as it is. Turning to the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, it is an international target, not something in isolation. We participate in it because we want to show the world what we are doing. We want to lead the world and set an example that we want others to follow. That is why I am extremely concerned that any weakening of this principle could weaken our ability to argue for others to do more.

In this debate, many noble Lords drew attention to DfID’s latest annual report. I too was going to quote a number of examples, but that has been done for me already. The key element—it is a principle we have heard in relation to the sustainable development goals—is our commitment to leave no one behind. That means we seek to alleviate poverty and address those fundamental issues in every country in the world. Every item of the programmes we have heard described addresses the needs of millions of people. We are making a difference.

When he introduced the original Bill, the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, made a comment which is worth repeating, as it addresses some of the issues raised by the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles. With the 2006 and 2015 Acts, we now have an annual target and a very strong framework of accountability, involving both the ICAI and Parliament. We should be properly assessing that framework and whether it is delivering the scrutiny we require to ensure value for money. I welcome the Bill proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, in the sense that it has given us the opportunity to debate this issue, and look forward to Committee stage, when we can go into these issues in a bit more detail. At the end of the day, we want public policy based on evidence. We have very strong evidence that what this country does today is helping to change the world.