International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

Friday 6th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord MacGregor of Pulham Market]

My Lords, there are two themes to all our amendments: hypothecation is one and the other is value for money et cetera. This is not the most important amendment to deal with hypothecation but it happens to be the first. That is the point. A lot of the other amendments—which I hope we can deal with much more swiftly because we will have dealt with the general arguments—are more designed to ease the target so as to deal with problems such as, for example, having in one given year to go on spending to meet the target when it might have been better to spread that over a few years. We have other amendments on those themes to deal with that problem. This is not the most important amendment but it happens to be the one where we can make the general case.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, with some trepidation I rise to speak to this amendment. Perhaps I should make it absolutely clear that I am not against the Government spending 0.7%, 0.8% or 1% of gross national income on aid. I am not opposed to aid; indeed, I have raised quite a lot of money for women in India. For me, the central argument is what we are trying to do here. I hope that I can avoid the noble Countess calling me to order in speaking to this amendment.

By the way, I do not know why there is confusion about which “the” it is. The amendment says:

“Page 1, line 2, leave out first ‘the’ and insert ‘a’”.

We are talking about “a” duty of the Secretary of State rather than “the” duty.

[The Countess of Mar]

I apologise to the noble Lord, but his noble friend sitting next to him said that he got the wrong “the”.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

Very occasionally, my noble friend gets things wrong. I thought that we should speak to the amendment on the Marshalled List. If the noble Countess wishes me to speak to the other amendment, I can make the same speech because I want to focus on what duty we are placing on the Secretary of State and what is the target.

[The Countess of Mar]

The noble Lord’s noble friend—the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale—reminded the noble Baroness, Lady Farrington, that the Lord Speaker said the second “the” when she proposed the amendment. Would the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, like to speak to that one?

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

In which case my noble friend got it right and that is what we will discuss. If we are to talk about the target, that is what I want to address. My understanding of the Bill and its genesis—the idea was included in our manifesto as something that we would do in the first Session of this Parliament; the timetable has slipped a little—was that we wanted to enshrine in statute the UN target of 0.7%. That is what I thought we were trying to do. The UN resolution made in 1970 in respect of the target that we are apparently signing up to said:

“In recognition of the special importance of the role which can be fulfilled only by official development assistance, a major part of financial resource transfers to the developing countries should be provided in the form of official development assistance. Each economically advanced country will progressively increase its official development assistance to the developing countries and will exert its best efforts to reach a minimum net amount of 0.7 per cent of its gross national product at market prices by the middle of the Decade”.

That would have been in 1975, so we are some 40 years behind that deadline. I point out that the target was 0.7% of “gross national product”, but the Bill before us sets a target for a percentage of gross national income. That is not the same thing.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed]

I apologise to the noble Lord. With that point, is he now addressing Amendment 2, which is in a separate group?

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

No, but I will do so at length—I keep being interrupted—when we get to Amendment 2. I am simply making the point that the target set in the Bill is not the target set by the UN. On a later amendment, we can discuss the implications of that.

My second point is that if we are to put “a” duty on the Secretary of State or whether the Secretary of State has “the” duty in respect of “a” target or “the” target—

[The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Wallace of Tankerness) (LD)]

I apologise, but just point out that the second “the” would make it the duty of “a” Secretary of State.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

If ever I am on a charge, I will make sure my noble and learned friend is there to defend me. If we are to look at the operation of a target and what its effect would be, I draw the House’s attention to the report of the National Audit Office published on 15 January this year. I do not know how many noble Lords have read the report but I very much hope that those who feel that they wish to support the Bill in the present form will take the opportunity to do so. The report, Managing the Official Development Assistance Target, is about how practical it is to have a target and what the management problems relating to it are. I hope that the noble Countess will accept that I am speaking very closely to the amendment.

I should apologise that I did not speak at Second Reading. I was here for it, but we were limited to five minutes at Second Reading to discuss this important Bill, and I felt that I should make way to let others have a little more time.

[A noble Lord]

Come on, Michael.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I am sorry that the noble Lord does not seem to accept my word on that.

Anyway, to the findings reached by the National Audit Office. It said:

“Assessing whether the Department has met the target is made more difficult by changes in the calculation of gross national income”.

In fact,

“the Department published 4 values for the ratio of ODA spending to gross national income, ranging from 0.67% to 0.72% depending on how gross national income is calculated”.

We need to be very careful about what we mean by a target, because even the department found itself wrestling with four different numbers.

The NAO also found:

“The government’s specification of its aid target and international reporting rules present the Department with challenges for managing its budget and spending. The requirement to hit, but not significantly exceed, aid spending equal to 0.7% of gross national income every calendar year means the Department has to hit a fairly narrow target against a background of considerable uncertainty. In addition, it has to manage its finances around a December and a March year end; use latest economic forecasts to predict the level of ODA required to meet 0.7%; monitor and forecast other departments’ ODA; and adjust its spending to reflect changing forecasts”.

In other words, the effect of “a” target or “the” target is to present the department with, in effect, having two financial years: one the calendar year and the other the financial year. That means that it would be half way through the calendar year at the start of a new financial year, trying to work out how it will meet the target.

The NAO also said:

“The Department’s spending forecasts for 2013 had weaknesses, making it more difficult for the Department to manage delivery of the ODA target”.

In addition, it said:

“To achieve the target and manage its budget the Department had to quickly add some activities to its 2013 plans but delay others set for 2014, making it more difficult to achieve value for money”.

That is an independent view of the effect of having a target. It has nothing whatever to do with whether or not you think that the Government should spend roughly 0.7% of our gross national income on development aid; it is about the effect of specifying a target.

The NAO states:

“The Department added activities at short notice in 2013 which constrained choice”.

I could go through the whole of the report—

[The Countess of Mar]

No.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

The noble Countess says no. I could go through the whole of the report strengthening the point about targets. I am picking up only headline points. For example:

“The Department added activities at short notice in 2013 which constrained choice … The activities the Department added in 2013 reduced its available budget at the start of 2014, and contributed to the delay of some of its planned activities”.

What that means is that the fact that it had been given a statutory target meant that some people in desperate need around the world had their projects cancelled because of the financial management difficulties imposed by having a target.

The NAO also found:

“The limited flexibility in the target led to the Department rescheduling payments in 2013, first to increase outturn, and then to reduce it … The Department phased its contributions to 2 key multilateral organisations to increase 2013 ODA”.

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

My Lords, I am now puzzled. Usually, I can follow the logic of the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth. The obvious logic, the House may feel, would have been to group together a whole lot of amendments, because that would have led to clarity about what we were discussing.

However, in my experience over the years, all departments and all Governments have set a financial limit for the year. I do not recognise the world that the noble Lord is speaking of, in which projects are not deferred because the department is coming to the end of the financial year without money. I well remember the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, as Secretary of State, allowing youth services to spend money providing that they committed to it within a week. An officer in Lancashire had to follow me down the railway station platform so that I could sign the application. This is managing budgets. The noble Lord must accept that all budgets are fixed and that there are management difficulties at the end of the year with that. I wish that noble Lords who are confusing the issue of how the budget is set—

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I apologise to the noble Baroness, but I think that she is making a Second Reading speech with that intervention. I have to ask her whether she has read the report.

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

I have.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

No, she has not, because if she had read the report she would not have made that intervention. The problem arises because the target of 0.7% is over a calendar year, so from January to December it is necessary to reach 0.7%, but the department’s budget period runs from April. Therefore, it is trying to manage programmes in respect of one financial year against a target set over a different financial year. The reason for that is because the Government are trying to set an example to other countries by meeting what they believe to be the UN target, which is measured over the calendar year in order to get equivalence.

The effect of that is that the unfortunate civil servants in DfID find themselves having to organise the budget with those two financial years. Even then, it is further complicated by the fact that only 82% of that budget is within the control of the department, because another bit of the budget is spent on environmental measures and another is spent by the Foreign Office, over which it has no control, so the civil servants have to find out what is happening in those other departments. The effect is that they end up shuffling money or writing cheques to multilateral organisations to meet the target when they should be concentrating on using the available resources efficiently and effectively to do the best for people in abject poverty around the world.

I know that the noble Baroness and others think that this is some kind of exercise to try to stop the Bill. I do not wish to stop the Bill, but I wish it to operate in a way that ensures value for money for the taxpayer and that projects around the globe are properly supported, not subject to some last-minute financial juggling in order to meet a ridiculous, but no doubt well intentioned, target in the Bill.

The amendment which my noble friend Lord Lawson was trying to move—the House was very discourteous to him over that—draws attention to that. The very same point was made two years ago by the Economic Affairs Committee unanimously, with all-party support—

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

We have already heard that on a number of occasions, and this repetition is becoming tedious.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I defer to the noble Lord, who is the absolute expert, as acknowledged by everyone in the House, on tedious repetition.

That is why I believe that the House and my noble and learned friend and the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, need to consider the amendment seriously, because I do not believe that what they intend to happen will be achieved.

[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

My Lords, I make a very brief intervention in support of the word used by my noble friend Lord Butler and the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles: flexibility. I came to support the amendment to substitute “a” for “the” because it introduces flexibility. I cite two examples. One was in the Select Committee on Soft Power, chaired so expertly by the noble Lord, Lord Howell. One of our recommendations was that consideration should be given to the lack of tie-up between DfID, the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence in Afghanistan, and the need to pool cross-government contributions to aid. Secondly, to pick up a point made by the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, in relation to the Armed Forces, something that always worried me is the overcharging of overseas cadets coming to places such as Sandhurst, which forces them to go elsewhere. If we allowed some aid to subsidise their attendance here, it might encourage them on to our side in future, with future benefits for this country.

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[Lord Fowler (Con)]

My Lords, perhaps I may make a short intervention arising from the comments of my noble friend Lord Forsyth and that of the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, when he said that we are not talking in this debate about humanitarian aid. It is of course true that only part of the budget goes to humanitarian aid, but it is a vital part and we cannot just turn our backs upon it. My noble friend Lord Forsyth talked about the National Audit Office report, which I have read, and last-minute financial juggling, but I think that is entirely unfair where DfID is concerned, and I will tell him why.

The majority of that money went to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. It was entirely vital that it went to that fund, because around the world there are 3.5 million deaths a year, so I hope at any rate that all those who have spoken today, including those in favour of this amendment, would agree that that was worthwhile expenditure. The idea that—

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

My Lords—

[Lord Fowler]

Let me go on, if I may, because we have just heard the noble Lord. If he will just be patient, then I will let him in. The noble Lord said that this was rushed out in March. To my knowledge, and as far as the Global Fund contribution was concerned, it was anything but rushed out in March. It was in fact previewed and promised by the previous Secretary of State. It has been on the books now for the last two years. The fact that it came out in March does not mean that the Secretary of State had a sudden rush of blood to the head and said, “Right, I’m going to give half a billion pounds to the Global Fund”; it meant that there was a process of careful consideration. It concerns me that that position should have been misstated. That is the reality of much of the aid money that we are talking about. Apart from development, which my noble friend Lord Howell spoke about, we are also talking about these issues.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I am most grateful to my noble friend. When I used the phrase “the money had been rushed out”, I was not quoting directly. My source was Margaret Hodge, who is chairman of the Public Accounts Committee. She concluded that it appeared that cash has been “rushed out” to meet the 0.7% target, and added:

“This raises questions about value for money which Parliament will be keen to look into”.

[Lord Fowler]

I am grateful, but not for the first time I think that Margaret Hodge is wrong. When my noble friend talks about last-minute financial juggling, he is overstating the case very substantially indeed. The reality that lies below what we have heard at the moment is that we are also talking about underresourced hospitals where drugs run out and patients die, and around the world where births are taking place on concrete floors. I know that my noble friend agrees with the point that I have just made.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

When my noble friend says that I am wrong to say that it was rushed out, does he acknowledge that 40% of the budget was spent in November and December 2013, December being the year end? Surely that points to a justification for what I said.

[Lord Fowler]

No, I do not think it does and for the reasons I have just stated. Untypically, I do not think that my noble friend is listening to my argument, because this has been in preparation for at least two years, to my knowledge. That cannot be denied. My noble friend talked about people not reading the reports, but he should read some of the statements made by previous Secretaries of State. It is totally unfair to talk about DfID financially juggling the figures. That is not right; it is responding to a need from around the world because there is a need for consistency. If you are going to develop a vaccine, for example, you need consistency in the money and support that come forward.

I will make one last point. My noble friend started his speech by saying disparagingly that this is a Liberal Democrat measure. It is a Liberal Democrat measure but it is one that is, and has been, supported by all three parties. We have a bipartisan position here. I say to my noble friends who have spoken in favour of this amendment that while that is obviously their view, which I respect—I respect my noble friend Lord MacGregor, for example, and my other colleagues—they are the minority in this debate. The majority in the other place overwhelmingly supported this provision. It would be my guess and estimate that if this ever came to a vote in this House on the principle, it would be supported here overwhelmingly in just the same way.

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[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

The noble Lord referred to me but he has misrepresented what I said. I did not say that the UN target was ridiculous. I said that the target in the Bill is not the UN target because the UN target is related to GDP and not to gross national income. If that sounds like a ridiculous point—which we can deal with later in our consideration of the Bill—I would offer an example. Luxembourg might be held to have met the target on the basis of GNI, but on the basis of GDP it would have met 50% of the target.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed]

Yes; and indeed that seems a very tempting preview of the debate on the next amendment. My noble friend Lord Forsyth will no doubt make that point then.

The United Kingdom has given an undertaking to meet the 0.7% target. In 1970, that related to gross national product; now, it relates to gross national income. The target has been further developed by the OECD Development Assistance Committee, which recognises that this is indeed the international standard to meet. It is therefore a mature, settled and respected target in an undertaking which the United Kingdom has given over many decades to meet. It is with considerable pride that we have met it.

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[Lord Tugendhat (Con)]

My Lords, this amendment stands in my name and in the names of my noble friend Lord Forsyth and the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey. It would replace the words “national income” with the words “domestic product” on page 1, line 4 of the Bill. I hope that, in view of the exchanges in the previous debate, we can all agree that that is what we are debating on this occasion.

Before coming to the substance of the amendment, I want to make it absolutely clear that, as I said in the Second Reading debate, I support the British aid budget, I am quite prepared to see it increased further in the light of economic circumstances, and I admire the achievements of DfID, which, as the result of our examination in the Economic Affairs Committee, I recognise is held in high esteem across the world. I hope that there is no misunderstanding on that point and that noble Lords do not mistake criticisms of the Bill as it stands as being criticisms of the aid project. It is very important to clarify that.

My objection is to a legally enforceable annual expenditure target and my views on that subject are very close to those enunciated by the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, speaking from his great experience. I not only oppose a legally enforceable limit in respect of the aid budget but would do so in respect of any budget, because I believe that it will lead to the misallocation of resources and distortions of various kinds. If it is adopted in its present form for the aid budget, that will in due course bring the aid budget into disrepute.

However, as the Government want to go down this road, and as the development community very much supports that, it is our task in this House, as far as possible, to save them from the consequences of that folly by improving the Bill. This amendment would go a small way—not more than that—towards doing that. I say that because the Bill confers on the aid budget, as others have pointed out, a unique privilege: it gives it a guaranteed share of national wealth, something that is denied to the National Health Service, education, defence, and other very important programmes. Therefore we must be sure, both for that reason and because of the legal obligation of the expenditure target, that the expenditure can be measured in the most precise and accurate way. I hope that no one would disagree with that.

The Bill defines the 0.7% in terms of a percentage of GNI and defines the period as a calendar year. Of course, as the House very well knows, the vast bulk of UK public expenditures are recorded as a percentage of GDP and on the basis of the financial year. This amendment would have the effect of enabling aid expenditure to be measured and recorded on the same basis as the overwhelming bulk of the budget. This is not a question of quantity—I am advised that the change from GNI to GDP would make virtually no difference on that score—but it would greatly increase transparency, which is something that in general the House approves of, and it might also avoid problems in future. Although there is not very much difference, as I understand it, between GNI and GDP at present, one has only to look at what happens with cost of living indices, whereby the differences between RPI and CPI can fluctuate quite markedly and lead to a great deal of misunderstanding. In that sphere, pensions, index-linked bonds and so on are measured by RPI, while other things are measured by CPI—and distortions arise. I suspect that distortions would also arise in relation to the difference between GNI and GDP.

If, as I suspect, this amendment is rejected, I think that the proposer of the Bill and the Minister—I emphasise “and the Minister”—should answer three questions. First, why use GNI? Presumably, it is being used for international reasons, but can we have an explanation as to precisely why it is GNI? Secondly, how will the aid expenditure figures and those relating to other programmes be reconciled? It is very important that the Government answer that question at the Committee stage. Thirdly, have the Government sought advice from the OBR or the NAO on this matter, and what did they say?

Let me just repeat the point about the Minister. Noble Lords will remember that about a year ago we debated the European Union (Referendum) Bill. I found myself at that time closer to the Liberal Democrat party and the Labour Party than to my own party. My noble friend Lord Dobbs, who proposed the Private Member’s Bill, summed up at the end of each amendment debate but the Minister on the Front Bench also intervened because of the implications for government policy. I have asked three absolutely relevant and explicit questions, which lie not in the province of my noble friend who proposes the Bill but in the province of the Government. I very much hope that the Minister will be able to answer the questions that I have put forward. I beg to move.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

My Lords, I rise to support my noble friend’s amendment. It may seem a nitpicking point to distinguish between GDP and GNI—the noble Baroness on the Front Bench says, “Yes, it is”. But I suspect that that is because she does not know the difference between them, because if she did know the difference she would know that it was not a nitpicking point.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)]

The noble Lord is very rude today.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

Well, I have been on the receiving end of a certain amount of abuse, and this is a very important point. As my noble friend has indicated, the difference between GDP and GNI for the United Kingdom is limited. But in support of the United Kingdom being in the van and being ahead of virtually every other OECD country in committing itself to a target of 0.7% of GNI, the proponents of that policy have argued that other countries—I think that there are five—have set an example. One of those countries is Luxembourg. The difference between GDP and GNI is that, for a country such as Luxembourg, which appears to meet the target very generously, the GNI is considerably higher than the GDP, because the GNI includes revenues that are repatriated from the country to outside. So if you set a target that is based on GNI, it gives anywhere that is a tax haven a huge advantage in meeting the target as opposed to countries that are not—and I thought that Members opposite were rather against tax havens and making life easier for tax havens. I cannot give the exact figure, but I would estimate that, if we take into account the moneys going through Luxembourg through multinational companies and going back to the United States and elsewhere, instead of more than meeting the target, I suspect that it is less than halfway towards it. This is not a nitpicking point. It is an important point. It is important because, as I said earlier—I am not going to repeat the argument—when the target was originally set by the UN, it was for GDP.

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[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I apologise if my noble friend thought I was referring to her. I was referring to the Opposition.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

That does not make it better.

[Baroness Northover]

Being somewhat short, I could not see who was over there and who my noble friend might have been addressing.

Obviously I take very seriously what my noble friends have put forward. I emphasise that the commitment to invest 0.7% of GNI in ODA is an international commitment that is reported to and monitored by the Development Assistance Committee of the OECD. The UK reports on this basis to the DAC, allowing comparison across donors. To aim at an alternative ODA target for the United Kingdom based on GDP would not only lead to multiple definitions, but create confusion. It would also undermine our intention to fulfil our international commitments. This is an international target; it would reduce our credibility and moral weight that our commitment to the 0.7% target carries with our international partners—I have encountered widespread support for the move to the 0.7% target that we have taken—which would limit our ability to press other donors to meet their obligations, for example, to the Global Fund, which my noble friend Lord Fowler mentioned. This would not be helpful or in the spirit of our commitment to the world’s poorest. Gross national income became the preferred measure of measuring a country’s wealth in 1993.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I think my noble friend would acknowledge that the target originally set by the UN was GDP. This is a genuine question: could she explain to the House when and why it was changed from GDP to GNI on an international basis and why it is necessary for us to adopt GNI, given the implications that that would have in future, as my noble friend pointed out, of possibly less money being available and less certainty?

[Baroness Northover]

Certainly. GNI became the preferred method of measuring a country’s wealth. As I said, we are meeting an international target.

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[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

What are we doing here? Are we passing law that affects what the United Kingdom will do in terms of its contribution to overseas aid, making that as stable a target as possible, or are we using legislation to make some declaratory statement about what we are doing internationally? It is very important to recognise the difference between the two. As the mover of this Bill, is my noble friend really saying that he prefers a measure that enables countries such as Luxembourg to appear to meet the target, whereas if they were subject to GDP they would have to contribute almost twice as much? Is he really saying that he is happy with that situation?

[Lord Purvis of Tweed]

We are making law and debating an amendment that proposes a change to the Bill. I have explained why that would not be appropriate and why we operate under our system of national accounts, which we adopted 20 years ago when my noble friend was a Cabinet Minister. On that basis, I invite my noble friend to withdraw his amendment.

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Moved by

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

3: Clause 1, page 1, line 5, leave out from “kingdom” to end of line and insert “over the period 2015/16 to 2019/20 and each subsequent five year period”

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

My Lords, the amendment seeks to leave out the provision for meeting the aid target annually and replace it with “five year period”. Its purpose is to try to get over some of the difficulties caused by having a fixed target that has to be met within a calendar year with, as I explained earlier, a Government who are budgeting on the basis of a financial year, and to allow some flexibility. I am sorry that my noble friend Lord Fowler, who I know feels passionately about these matters, is not in his place—he has arrived. In his excellent speech he made a number of points that relate directly to this issue and which I shall try to deal with.

The amendment seeks to change the timeframe within which the 0.7% target applies. The Bill currently places a duty on the Secretary of State to ensure that public spending reaches 0.7% of GNI every year. I should just like to point out that the UN resolution did not actually require 0.7% to be achieved each and every year, so my amendment is not in conflict with the original UN resolution. For some reason, “every year” has been added in the nature of this Bill, and I believe that that greatly adds to the impracticalities and difficulties that the Bill presents. The amendment would mean that public spending on international aid would be required to reach 0.7% of GNI across a five-year period, and that would avoid the need to rush or defer spending on aid programmes.

I shall resist the temptation to take the Committee through the whole NAO report, which was published on 15 January and which I referred to earlier, but it deals with the real concerns and difficulties that the department has had in managing what it is being asked to do by government.

[Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale]

At the risk of provoking the noble Lord to read out the whole of the NAO report, I hope that he will accept that during the Second Reading debate, which he listened to very carefully, a number of alternative versions and impressions of that report were described by noble Lords, including the very positive comments made in the report about the way the department was preparing for this eventuality. It was not a one-sided report and the version that the noble Lord gave earlier was not the only version described during Second Reading.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I am not seeking to take sides with anyone. If the National Audit Office and the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee draw our attention to the very serious difficulties which the department has had to meet, and to the serious implications for getting the best value for money in the aid programme, we need to take account of that.

[Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale]

The report, which I have read in great detail, praises the department for the way in which it sought to achieve those objectives.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

And rightly so. The department is absolutely heroic. It has been given an impossible task. If the noble Lord has read the report, he will see that it had to juggle its budgets and go to the Treasury for extra cash. My noble friend on the Front Bench is shaking her head. If she wants to intervene and contradict me, I would be happy to give way, because it is clear from the report that it has had to do so because of the Government’s policy.

By the way, the Government do not need this Bill to decide to spend 0.7%, 0.8%, 0.9% or 2% of GDP on development aid. This is not a sine qua non as far as the Government’s policy is concerned. Indeed, without the Bill the UK’s international aid budget has grown exponentially over the past few years. In absolute terms, the UK ODA spending increased from £3.8 billion in 2003 to £11.4 billion in 2013. That is an increase of £8 billion over a 10-year period. The most recent rise in spending is particularly striking; it increased by £2.67 billion between 2012 and 2013. That is a 33% increase in spending, which is a lot to take account of in one year.

The National Audit Office report, which I shall paraphrase and summarise—I hope the noble Lord will accept that it is a fair assessment—said that DfID spent an extra £1 billion in international aid in just eight weeks towards the end of 2013 to satisfy the 0.7% target. Spending an extra £1 billion in eight weeks before the year end reminds me of the bad old days of local government when all the roads started getting dug up in March because the local authorities were trying to spend their budgets. All kinds of projects that would not have made the cut if considered on a priority basis and a sensible basis suddenly got done. This is the very situation that we are creating by having this inflexible target over a limited period of time, and it is what the amendment seeks to address.

My noble friend Lord Fowler chided me for using words such as “rush”. He is absolutely right; one of the beneficiaries of the rush to spend was indeed the AIDS programme—and a very worthwhile programme that is. I do not know which programmes lost out the following year when they had to be throttled back in order for the target to be met, but of DfID’s spending in 2013, around 40% occurred in November and December. If that does not say that this is a department trying to spend the money and struggling to meet a target, I do not know what it says. Why did it take until the last two months of the calendar year, the year in which the target is assessed, to spend 40% of the budget? The National Audit Office outlined a number of concerns relating to the 0.7% target and its impact on efficiency of aid spending. These include DfID having to,

“quickly add some activities to its 2013 plans but delay others set for 2014, making it more difficult to achieve value for money”.

One of the arguments that we have heard this morning was used by the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, as I recall, in his Second Reading speech. He said, “If we have this target, we can stop talking about the quantity of aid and start thinking about the quality of aid”. I paraphrase him and am relying on memory; I hope I have not misrepresented him.

[Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale]

I am delighted that the noble Lord has repeated my argument.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

The noble Lord’s argument is no good if we stick with the provisions in the Bill, because, as he said himself, the National Audit Office report says that the target resulted in some activities having to be rushed in. They had to be ready to be implemented and other activities had to be delayed. That is not providing certainty or long-term planning; it is substituting for long-term planning the shifting of particular programmes, such as the AIDS programme that my noble friend Lord Fowler referred to. “What can we do? What can we spend this money on? Right, let’s do the AIDS thing because that is ready to fly, and we will defer this other one because we will not then be able to afford it”. Everything is geared towards meeting the 0.7% target.

[Lord Cashman (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way, but I want to introduce a degree of realism that is somewhat missing. The comparisons that he is making, and where they are being made, bear no relation to the suffering and needs of people in other parts of the world. No matter how we dress these words up, outside this House it will be read as an intention to deny and delay the very projects and needs which the poorest of the world are calling out for. Think only of this: not of the child that needs to go to bed with food in its stomach but of the woman who loses her life and her child in childbirth because not enough money is going into that maternity service. Think of that and then choose your words.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for making my argument, because if he really is concerned about these people, he will be concerned about what the NAO report says.

[Lord Cashman]

My Lords—

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I will, if I may, reply to the noble Lord’s noble friend first. This is the National Audit Office. It has no partisan view. Its report says that rescheduling had to take place, leading to,

“£250 million … of planned activity”—

meaning the very people the noble Lord is talking about—being moved from the first three months of 2014 into 2014-15. It was delayed. The NAO claims that the rescheduling,

“is likely to have delayed some of the benefits those activities were designed to provide”.

If the noble Lord is sincere in what he is saying, as I am sure he is, he is on my side of this argument.

[Lord Cashman]

I am again grateful to the noble Lord, and this, I promise your Lordships, will be my last intervention, but with all due respect he cannot represent my argument and I do not believe that he ever could. Audits are there to look at something through a particular lens. The economic arguments that we have heard have been dressed up as an exact science. If that is so, I would be interested to hear why economists and certain Treasuries have got it wrong for so long. At the heart of the debate is making sure that commitments that we have made globally are met and that we imagine that we are the poorest, not that we sit in this noble House and go home and afford ourselves the services that we do. I will not intervene again but, with all due respect to the noble Lord, he does not and could not make my arguments.

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[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I agree that I could not make the noble Lord’s arguments because they are confused. He is confusing two things: the desire to ensure that we have effective programmes to deal with poverty and the desire to meet a particular target and implement it in a legislative form that will have the effect of programmes being delayed and of money being spent unwisely because of the constraints that are being put on the very excellent people in DfID. We are very lucky; in DfID, we have one of the best organisations in the world. Why on earth are we shackling it in a way that prevents it from setting priorities, doing its job effectively and getting the long-term certainty and commitment which the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, who I see is about to intervene again, has talked of so eloquently in his speech.

[Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale]

I thank the noble Lord for allowing me to respond to his reference to my Second Reading speech. I wish to make two points. First—I hope that the noble Lord accepts this—the National Audit Office report makes clear that it does not believe, and has no evidence to suggest, that any of the money that was spent on projects in that financial year was wrongly spent or that the projects were not worth while. That is very clear in the National Audit Office report. Secondly, that report was specifically commissioned because this was the first year of meeting the new target and clearly there were going to be timescale issues in meeting the target in the first year. The point that noble Lords are making—including the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, in bringing forward this Bill—is that bringing consistency and predictability to meeting this target year after year will help deal with those timescale issues, not exacerbate them.

[Viscount Astor (Con)]

My Lords, before my noble friend replies to the noble Lord, will he confirm that he is speaking to all the amendments in the group as it is a large group? I say to the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, that it is normal in Committee to allow the mover of the amendment to make his speech. There is plenty of opportunity to respond afterwards. Indeed, the mover of the amendment can then respond at the end of the debate.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

It is true that there are a lot of amendments in the group but they are consequential on the concept of creating a five-year period. The noble Lord, Lord McConnell, and I are old sparring partners and old habits die hard for him. In response to his intervention, and at the risk of being accused of repetition—I note that the noble Countess, Lady Mar, is not present—I stress that the National Audit Office report said that DfID was having to,

“quickly add some activities to its 2013 plans but delay others set for 2014, making it more difficult to achieve value for money”.

What does that mean if not that it was not getting the best bang for the buck? The noble Lord said that 2013 was the first year for meeting the relevant target. He is absolutely right about that. However, the report goes on to say:

“The Department’s plans for delivering the 2015 ODA target require it to rapidly increase its investments, which could be difficult for it to achieve”.

If that is not saying loud and clear that we are unnecessarily putting the department in a straitjacket, I do not know what is. My amendment would prevent that and I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, will accept it.

The noble Lord opposite is clearly not persuaded by the National Audit Office report. My noble friend Lord Fowler was very unkind to Margaret Hodge, the chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, who I think in many respects has done a great job in chairing that committee. Indeed, she has said that it appeared that the cash has been “rushed out” to “meet the 0.7% target”.

She added:

“This raises questions about value for money which Parliament will be keen to look into”.

I do not think we can ignore that. Just to show that I am being balanced and fair, Sir Peter Luff, a very distinguished colleague, who many of us in this House remember with great affection, said:

“The committee must grill Dfid very carefully to make sure this money was spent wisely and well. This proves the folly of binding targets which set out how much you have to spend irrespective of need”.

Neither of these parliamentarians is noted for holding extreme views.

However, as the noble Lord is not happy with National Audit Office’s view, I turn to the International Development Committee, which was also concerned about the impact of the 0.7% target on the effectiveness of aid. It stated in its annual report of May 2014:

“2013 was an exceptional year. DFID’s expenditure increased rapidly as UK ODA rose from 0.56% to 0.7% of GNI. Nevertheless, it does seem surprising that DFID should spend over a quarter of its budget in December and almost 40% of its budget in November and December. DFID should provide the reassurance that its expenditure is rational and costeffective and not rushed out at the end of the year, which is the impression that can be given by its spending profile in 2013. We recommend that DFID carefully monitor its ability to meet the 0.7% target given uncertainties about both its own spending and that of other Departments and the GNI figure, which is itself subject to regular revision”.

As regards that latter point on regular revision, to which my noble friend Lord Howell referred, suddenly, it is decided that we need to take account of illegal drugs activity and prostitution and, as a result of that, we have to find an extra several hundred million pounds to spend on the aid budget. Does that make sense? It may be a bonus for the department, but it will certainly not be part of a planned approach.

I feel strongly about this issue as I was a member of the Economic Affairs Committee, under the splendid chairmanship of my noble friend Lord MacGregor, which took evidence on this issue. The evidence is there for people to see. It highlighted the problems, including that of wrongly prioritising the amount that is spent rather than the results that are achieved. Throughout the morning we have talked about how much is spent rather than how to get the best value for money from what is spent, as I said when we discussed the earlier amendment of my noble friend Lord MacGregor. We thought that a single-year target,

“makes the achievement of the spending target more important than the overall effectiveness of the programme”.

That was one of the conclusions of this House’s distinguished committee. We also said that,

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

That is what we concluded a few years ago and that view is supported by the NAO and the International Development Committee.

A further point that has not been touched on this morning is that reaching the target increases the risk that aid will have a corrosive effect on other political systems by creating aid dependency. That, again, points to what DfID is doing very successfully—that is, looking at more targeted and sophisticated ways of providing aid and support and involving the private sector. I sense that the House has probably heard enough of this argument. I beg to move.

[Lord Finkelstein (Con)]

My Lords, unfortunately, I was not able to speak in the Second Reading debate, even though I was present, as I could not be certain that I could attend the whole debate. However, I assure the Committee that I intend to speak briefly and only to the amendment.

I write a football column each week for the Times, and have done for more than a decade. The column is concerned with the quality of football teams and helps readers to distinguish between noise and signal. A team that wins 50% of its games will not do so by regularly winning, then losing, winning then losing; it will do it in clusters. When statisticians assessed those clusters, they discovered that they are randomly distributed. In other words, a team will win a cluster but that may be just because it has a run of random results and then it will win, win, win, draw, draw, lose, lose in that cluster. There is a trophy that is awarded entirely for randomness: it is called the Barclays Manager of the Month. When a team’s cluster of wins coincides with a calendar month, its manager becomes Barclays Manager of the Month. In the following month, when that team loses its games, something occurs that is called regression to the mean, and the manager gets fired. This is a perfectly simple statistical concept that ought to be applied to the Bill.

It is not a very good idea to try to set a target in law, on which Parliament must report, that is attached to a single year’s variable data. It is much better to try to find a period that might represent some sort of significance over a long period of time. A single year cannot do that and five years can attempt to do that. Even five years is quite a short period but it is certainly a great deal better than a single year.

This is a technical objection to the Bill, even though others may think it goes to the heart of the argument for it, but the Bill would certainly be greatly improved if a simple concept of randomness was agreed so that we do not have a law for randomness in the same way that we have a cup for it.

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[Baroness Northover]

My Lords, in considering this group of amendments, I hear what my noble friends are saying about seeking to help the Government to manage our spending on official development assistance in a more flexible and predictable manner. However, these amendments, if carried, would have significant disadvantages, in our view, not least in terms of the flexibility and predictability noble Lords are seeking to promote.

First, as has been made clear previously, there is a need for an internationally consistent approach. The OECD DAC is made up of 29 members, and to ensure that monitoring and reporting of DAC members’ budgets is consistent and can be reported transparently, the DAC has decided to monitor ODA on the basis of single calendar years. If the UK moved to a five-year average, the UK would still have to submit annual ODA information to the OECD DAC. The need for consistency and clarity is essential. Importantly, using an alternative definition would also undermine the weight that our commitment to 0.7% carries with our international partners, as I mentioned before.

It is also important to note that the department already manages to an annual target, as does any other government department—as the noble Baroness, Lady Farrington, mentioned—in order to deliver within annual budgets. Therefore—

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

My Lords—

[Baroness Northover]

I think I had better continue. I am sure the noble Lord will wish to come in later. Therefore, a five-year target would not add additional flexibility. We have had reference to spending at the end of the 2013. I underline what my noble friend Lord Fowler said about the commitment to the Global Fund. I know how long it took to get that decision made and out, and the importance of that decision and the commitment that we made. I would also add, as I did at Second Reading, that it seems, perhaps, to have been set aside.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

My Lords—

[Baroness Northover]

I am not going to give way. I will carry on in the interests of time. We also faced Typhoon Haiyan and an unexpectedly high increase in the number of refugees fleeing violence in Syria and facing the winter in the open. I have read the NAO report. The NAO, in its scrutiny, found no evidence that the department failed to follow its normal business processes—and it looked very carefully indeed at those. For example, the report says:

“The Department took positive steps to prepare for the 33% increase in its budget in 2013-14”.

It also says:

“The Department’s decision to issue more notes to”,

the Global Fund and the World Bank,

“in 2013 did not alter the total value of notes it planned to provide them and did not affect the content and timing of the programmes”.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I am most grateful to my noble friend for giving way. I think that her argument is that, if the department spent, say, 0.8% one year, 0.6% another year and 0.9% the year after that but it met the 0.7% target over the five years, that would not be acceptable because it would look odd in the OECD statistics. As the vast majority of OECD members are nowhere near 0.7%, why is that a problem?

[Baroness Northover]

My noble friend has made his case very clear and others have, too, but we are managing the budget over a longer period in a way that it can hit those targets in those specific years. We have mechanisms to ensure that we spend our money in a strategic and long-term way. Noble Lords are very familiar with that—not least my noble friend Lord Fowler—and it does not require that kind of potential splurging at the end of the year in order to hit the target. We make annual contributions to a number of multilateral bodies and those are organised using the notes system that I have just mentioned, which allows a note to be counted as aid when issued but it is not cashed until the money has been properly spent in the fullness of time. This means that the department has the flexibility that it needs, as other government departments do, to arrange its accounting to fulfil its obligation to spend at the 0.7% target.

My noble friend Lord Tugendhat, in withdrawing the previous amendment, clearly did not feel that I had adequately answered his question about the OBR. I apologise if I did not answer adequately, and I will look very carefully at what he said and write to him if I need to clarify anything further. However, I hope that I answered his question on whether GNI is an international standard, as I went into that in some depth. Clearly, the target does not change the way that departmental budgets are reconciled with each other—that is not a challenge that we encounter. The ODA GNI figure is a national statistic and the methodology has been agreed by the Office for National Statistics. We are bound by that methodology, which is agreed and overseen by the ONS, which is the appropriate body to deal with that.

I remind noble Lords that the International Development (Reporting and Transparency) Act 2006 established a duty on the Secretary of State to lay before each House of Parliament an annual report about the UK’s development efforts and spending, including reporting on progress towards meeting the 0.7% GNI target for ODA. Therefore, there is such an annual accounting in law anyway. Maintaining DfID’s accountability for tracking and reporting on its own spending to Parliament is more appropriate, both from a governance and a practical point of view, than putting such a responsibility on the Office for Budget Responsibility. If we were to do that, this would seem to be outside the current mandate of the OBR and might require revision of the 2006 Act.

Clearly, spending needs to be fully scrutinised, as the right honourable Margaret Hodge and the honourable Peter Luff said, and my noble friend Lord Purvis has outlined the very thorough and independent way in which that happens. I thank my noble friends Lord Howell, Lord Brooke and others for their wonderful tributes to DfID on the way that it manages this. Indeed, DfID is at the forefront of how best to assist in developing countries, which will undoubtedly change, and needs to change, over time.

Although I understand the intentions behind these amendments, I urge noble Lords to reject them.

[Baroness Northover]

I do not need to come back on Report, because I hope that I can answer my noble friend now. I find it immensely helpful that there is a definition of ODA. My noble friend is right that there is discussion of whether the definition needs to be updated, but the definition as drawn at the moment, which is what we answer to, is a very useful device because it makes clear that you cannot spend money on, for example, tanks or whatever someone might feel would be a useful way of spending the money. Therefore, from my perspective, it is a very useful discipline. There are certain things you can do within ODA, and it has to support the poorest and development. The noble Lord has probably seen the definition of what is excluded, as have I, and I frequently look at it. That serves as a useful discipline because, should DfID be asked to pass money to some department to do something which it feels is not appropriate, it is easy to point out that that does not fit within ODA and it would therefore mean that we would not meet the 0.7% target.

It is true that the OECD is at the moment giving consideration to whether we need to update this given the involvement, not in military offensives and so on but in what is now done internationally in terms of peacekeeping. However, that has not yet been decided. I am glad that the OECD is looking at what might be appropriate but I do not believe that any conclusion that the OECD comes to will be at variance with the basic commitment to support development in the poorest countries and of the poorest people.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

As I understand the Bill, it places a duty on the Secretary of State to meet the target. If the target is not met, there has to be a report to Parliament. Clause 3 states:

“The only means of securing accountability in relation to the duty in section 1 is that established by the provision in section 2 for the laying of a statement before Parliament … Accordingly, the fact that the duty in section 1 has not been, or will or may not be, complied with does not affect the lawfulness of anything done, or omitted to be done, by any person”.

Does that mean that the impact of the Bill is that, if the target is not met, all the Secretary of State has to do is lay a Statement before Parliament and then there is no further sanction against the Government? Or am I missing something?

[Baroness Northover]

I am sure that my noble friend Lord Purvis will address this issue. It is a Private Member’s Bill and the Government support it as it stands, unamended.

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[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

On the point of creating impressions, my noble friend might be interested to know that the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, has just tweeted:

“Lord Forsyth clearly enjoys fillibustering and denying with weasel words the needs of the poorest”.

[Lord Lawson of Blaby]

That is disgraceful. No doubt the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, will want to withdraw his tweet. I am not sure how you “untweet” or “detweet”, but I am sure he will wish to do so. I am afraid I am not sufficiently technologically proficient to advise him on this matter, but I am sure he knows all about it.

Turning now to the remarks of the Minister, I wish to deal with three points in particular. First, she made a great defence of her department, DfID. I have to say that she has half a point here. If one looks at the various aid agencies around the world, DfID is probably one of the best. However, part of the problem is that a large proportion of British overseas aid is handled not by DfID but by multinational institutions, in particular the United Nations and the European Union—and all the evidence we have indicates that neither of those institutions has anything like the robust high standards to which DfID aspires. That is a major problem, and of course the more ODA is increased, the greater the problem becomes.

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[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

My Lords—

[Lord Purvis of Tweed]

I have obviously not satisfied my noble friend, but with the clarification provided on the first element, I will give way to him.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I am rather alarmed by that, because I thought that I must be misreading the Bill, because I asked: am I right that all the Bill does is require the Secretary of State to reach a particular target, and if he does not reach the target, to come to Parliament to say, “I have not reached it because actually, the economy is in a bad way”, but then there is no redress for those outside? If you had a Government who did not wish to meet the 0.7% target, all that the Minister has to do is to come along and say, “I am not going to meet the target, because I think that the economy is in great difficulty”. If that is what the Bill says, I do not think that that is what the noble Lord has put on the tin.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed]

It is not just what is on the tin but what is in the Bill. I am a proud parliamentarian. I take very seriously my role of scrutinising and holding government to account. It is the duty of Ministers and DfID to bring information to Parliament and for Parliament to do its job. Parliament is perfectly capable of calling Ministers to account; it has in the past, and I am proud to be part of the process to do that in future. On that basis, I hope that the noble Lord will not press his amendment.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

My Lords, we have had a very interesting debate, particularly that last confirmation from the proposer of the Bill. Many people outside—indeed, many people in both Houses—believed that the Bill guaranteed that 0.7% of GDP would be spent on overseas development aid. Many of those who spoke on Second Reading appeared to believe that that was the case. This is a public relations exercise to tell us that that is what the Bill does. If, as many of us do, we want considerable resources to be made available for development aid, it seems to me perverse as part of that exercise to put in place a system of targets which need to be met in one year rather than five years which, as we have argued at great length this morning, would result in damage to ensuring value for money and proper accountability.

In his response the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, pointed out that much of the development aid goes into multilateral programmes. That is true; a minority of the aid goes on emergency relief and disaster—less than 10%, I believe. It is a small proportion. Many people believe that that is what we are discussing when we talk about £11 billion being spent, when only just more than £1 billion is actually going on that purpose. We are talking about development aid here, and a large part of that goes to other agencies such as the European Union.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

Good.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

The noble Baroness, for whom I have the highest regard, says, “Good”. I have to say that the European Union does not have a terribly good record in accountability for public money. Indeed, one of DfID’s objectives is to improve accountability and be less dependent on multilateral programmes.

However, as has been pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, and indeed the Minister, in her short intervention in the debate, the way in which you solve the problem of not being able to reach the target is to put money into multilateral programmes. For accounting purposes—I am sure that the Minister will intervene if I am wrong about this—if the department writes a cheque to a multilateral organisation, it counts as expenditure in year, whereas if it actually supports a bilateral programme, the expenditure accrues as the programme continues. So the perverse incentives will be to put more and more into multilateral programmes or those run by other agencies such as the EU and the UN, where the degree of accountability which I think all of us in the Committee believe we should have would not be delivered.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

It was some years ago now that I went to visit my noble friend Lord Patten of Barnes when he was commissioner for overseas aid in the European Union. He spent quite some time complaining about how few staff he had in comparison with the number that he had when doing the same job in London. I do not know whether that situation has improved but I suspect that it probably has not—and my noble friend was saying quite clearly that he did not have the resources to manage the programmes under his control.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

Indeed, and while I do not particularly wish to detain the House, that is also an issue for DfID. When we took evidence from the body set up to monitor the spending, it had four commissioners and a very small staff to deal with a programme which was being increased in size by more than a third. Similarly, DfID itself—although it is common ground that it has done a great job—is having a huge increase in its budget and, at the same time, a 40% reduction in the size of the department.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

That was a government decision.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I do not know whether the noble Baroness shares my concern, but she is quite right that it was a government decision—and I think it is a foolish government decision to say that we are going to hugely increase the money and the programmes being provided while greatly reducing the people who are going to be responsible for seeing that the money is well spent. Perhaps we might come on to that at a later stage.

The noble Lord, Lord Cashman, made an impassioned plea and told the House that he was very concerned that the discussions which we are having about accountability and value for money would be misrepresented outside this House. I have to say that for him to have tweeted that,

“Lord Forsyth clearly enjoys fillibustering and denying with weasel words the needs of the poorest”,

is really unworthy of him. I think that I have raised nearly £100,000 for women in India. The noble Lord should not question our motives. It should be obvious from the speeches made and the amendments which are being considered that the intention here is to provide flexibility for the department to use scarce resources wisely.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed]

My Lords—

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

In a second. Indeed, the promoter of the Bill at Second Reading in the other place, Michael Moore, said that it was a duty to all constituents, who he pointed out were struggling in the current economic climate, to advocate what is in the best interests of our country—and I agree with that.

I remind people, when they are talking about spending 0.7% of GDP, that this is not money that we have—it is money that we are borrowing. The proposition here is that we borrow money in order to make a commitment. If you are borrowing money in order to spend it, at the very least you should be absolutely certain that you are getting a sensible return on it, and recognise that you are passing on the burden to the next generation—because borrowing is simply taxation deferred. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 3 withdrawn.