Overseas Development Aid

Lord Collins of Highbury Excerpts

Tuesday 9th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for repeating the response to the Urgent Question. It is a pity this is an Urgent Question and not a Statement from the Government, because if it had been a Statement we could have had a little more time to probe exactly what the Secretary of State meant this morning when she spoke at the CDC. The Minister knows that I have repeatedly asked questions about the Government’s intention with the DAC definition of ODA, since immediately after the election and of course in November. The clear intentions were never really apparent, but in the debate we had on the CDC Bill in this House it was made perfectly clear that we supported it because we wanted the CDC to leverage more investment. Everyone knows we will not achieve the SDGs simply on ODA alone. For the Secretary of State to preach to the Opposition about how that can be achieved is nonsense. The fact is that we need greater additionality. There should never be a case where we are using CDC investment, getting a return and then counting the return as ODA-accountable. It is double counting. It is wrong. What we want to do is use the CDC to leverage more.

I want to ask the Minister a very specific question on how the Government intend to move forward. Will he give an assurance that we will not take unilateral action to change the definition of ODA, and that we will continue to work with our partners in the DAC and maintain a consensus? This country has led the way, and it would be a shame if we broke that consensus.

[Lord Bates]

The noble Lord is right to say that the development assistance community works by consensus. That is how it arrives at its conclusions. Regarding this debate, I feel that a few issues are being conflated. One is the SDGs, to which we are all committed and which we discussed earlier today. The second is the realisation—I readily accept that the noble Lord has regularly made a point of it—that that cannot be achieved by public flows alone. It has to be catalytic to leverage in private sector investment. Then there was the question about impact investing, and whether something else could be done in the future so that more private citizens could leverage in capital.

The final issue comes to the heart of the noble Lord’s question, about CDC funding. This is where we have had a lot of debate. If, for example, your £1 billion is put into CDC and over time the investments make a profit which is then returned into the fund—it is 100% UK-owned, so it is public sector in that sense—and then that profit is reinvested, should that reinvestment score? It is a debate that has to be had. We believe there is a case for doing that, but we have to do it by working with our partners and discussing it with them. This is one of a range of points on this issue. I hope that that has been helpful.