International Development Policies

Lord Desai Excerpts

Thursday 19th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Desai (Lab)]

My Lords, let me see whether I can do it in two minutes. Over the 60 years that I have studied this problem, our idea of what causes development has got more rather than less complicated. The goals that we set for our aid agencies have become baroquely rich, and there are so many that it is not possible for any development agency to satisfy the many people who judge it.

A few years ago, I suggested when speaking in a DfID debate that the one thing we should do with the global aid budget was count how many poor there are and do a direct cash transfer of the entire development budget to the poor. At that time, it came out to be around $50 per poor person. I think there are now fewer poor, so we may be able to get more. If you want to get rid of poverty, the only thing to do is to transfer cash directly to the poor. If you cannot do that, I would suggest just one more thing that may relieve it. The only criteria of development is: what is the future of the girl child? If you can do better for the girl child in every society when you intervene, that would define your success.