International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill

Debate between Lord Forsyth of Drumlean and Lord Cashman

Friday 6th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[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.