Lord Fowler
Main Page: Lord Fowler (Crossbench - Life peer)
Lord Fowler
That this House takes note of the importance of the UK foreign aid programme.
Lord Fowler (CB)
My Lords, I thank my Cross-Bench colleagues for the opportunity of this debate. I also declare my interest as an ambassador for UNAIDS.
In 2015, Parliament passed a Bill that placed a duty on Governments to devote 0.7% of national income to overseas aid. It was approved overwhelmingly in both Houses. My comment at Second Reading in this House was that it was
“what I would expect from a civilised and outward-looking country that recognises it has responsibilities to try to help the poorest people in other parts of the world”.—[Official Report, 23/1/15; col. 1530.]
I would suggest that our responsibilities remain the same today. I also suggest that in spite of the examples of corruption in the use of aid money, which I deplore as the lowest form of crime, the effort of the world through the help of Governments and the United Nations, together with the wonderful support of charitable organisations, volunteers, doctors and nurses, and countless others, has led to major steps forward.
No one pretends that the battle is remotely over. We have edged forward but there is still a mountain to climb. Take, for example, HIV/AIDS. The latest figures show that almost 700,000 men, women and children around the world died from AIDS-related illnesses last year. There are 38 million people around the world living with HIV. In sub-Saharan Africa, women and girls account for 60% of all new infections and we know that if girls leave school early before the secondary stage, their chances of having HIV are doubled.
However, that terrible toll is not remotely an isolated case. It is extraordinarily difficult to express in a few words the magnitude of the full challenge or to grasp the full implication of the cut from 0.7% that the Government have ordered. There are the problems concerned with the Global Fund to End Modern Slavery, raised in the other place by the former Prime Minister Mrs May, which include programmes to end the commercial exploitation of children. Our funding there is being cut by 80%. Incidentally, together with Mrs May, three other former Prime Ministers have condemned the cuts in foreign aid.
The present Prime Minister declares a personal priority for aid in girls’ education but that aid has been cut while aid to UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund, has been cut by 60%. Among the multitude of other programmes suffering cuts in UK aid, which are sometimes total, are a project to provide healthcare in deprived areas of Bangladesh, help for clean water projects in Africa and, my own particular cause, UNAIDS, which has had its grant cut by 83%. Even funding for Yemen, which has the world’s worst humanitarian emergency, has been cut back, and we will doubtless hear from the noble Lord, Lord Herbert, on the position with TB, perhaps the world’s biggest killer.
It is for reasons such as those that every country, bar one, inside the G7 group of the most prosperous nations in the world has decided not to cut back their aid programmes. The one exception is, of course, Britain, which until now has taken pride in its efforts to help the poorest and the sick, and rightly so. However, the Treasury says now that the financial circumstances of the country explain the cut. I would find that argument easier to accept if I did not remember that back in 2015, long before Covid, it was the Treasury that was most passionately opposed to this international Act. Its argument then was that it was wrong to ring-fence this small part of its budget and that the matter should be left to the discretion of the Chancellor—exactly what the Treasury is now achieving. Back in 2015, its objection was debated and, crucially, in Parliament it was decisively rejected.
What makes these cuts so objectionable, even to those who might have supported the economic case, is that Parliament today has had no opportunity to vote on the issue at all. An Act of Parliament has been changed by ministerial decree. There is a gigantic issue of principle here that no true parliamentarian can ignore. In the other place, Andrew Mitchell, the MP for Sutton Coldfield, made a brave attempt to force the matter to a vote and I pay tribute to him. I am tempted to say that Sutton Coldfield does well in electing its MPs to the House of Commons. Today in this House, we have a debate with more than 40 speakers who, as we have heard, are confined to a strict two minutes each. It shows the strength of opinion but, again, there is no prospect of a vote.
That fundamental criticism was immensely strengthened by none other than Mr Speaker in the other place. He said that he shared “the House’s frustration” at its failure to be able to make an effective decision on the Government’s action. It was not just Parliament, he said, but the country as a whole that,
“needs this matter to be debated and aired, and an effective decision to be taken”.—[Official Report, Commons, 7/6/21; col. 668.]
Frankly, the parliamentary process has so far proved to be ineffective. It is for that reason that many of us are now looking at other remedies. That remedy may lie in the law itself and an examination of a basic question: whether the action taken by Ministers is fundamentally lawful.
Let us remember that the Government agreed with the advice that they needed legislation to change the position. On 25 November last year, the Chancellor of the Exchequer said that from the Dispatch Box, and the Foreign Secretary said the same thing the very next day, 26 November. They spelled out the reduction from 0.7% but forgot to mention, perhaps, the reduction provided for in the Bill itself automatically with the reduction in national income.
On the promise of legislation, all that changed some months later when the Government announced that, after further reflection—which is their way of saying that the Chief Whips had told them that they were in danger of being defeated—they did not actually need legislation at all. They said that all they had to do was make a statement—a point raised in this House by my noble and learned friend Lord Judge and the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed. The form of statement is, to put it mildly, unclear. A Written Answer might suffice, or perhaps just a letter. Parliamentary accountability has come to this.
Another fundamental question and criticism has come from the former Solicitor-General, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, who will also speak in this debate. He argued that, until Parliament changes the law, there is a statutory duty to meet the 0.7% target. The Government can say that they intend to change the law but, until that is done, they are subject to it. They cannot legitimise their failure to hit a target by announcing in advance their intention to fail.
In short, there are legal options open to us to challenge these cuts. The difficulty, of course, is that they will take time. In my view, the best outcome is for this to be settled in Parliament. The Government should recognise that aid organisations today face unique and urgent problems, partly because of Covid. How much better it would be for the Government to recognise that reality and change course. The issues of poverty and lack of health provision remain the same; the difference is that, with the onset of Covid, they have become even more acute.
One of the most powerful letters I have received during this crisis came from a young British doctor who had been working for several years in Sierra Leone. He quoted the experience of his successor. She had said to him:
“Pretty much every one of our funding sources has been cut entirely overnight with no notice. It is hard to overstate how catastrophic this will be to our patients in Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somaliland. From the infectious diseases unit we built with UK funding as a first line of defence against pandemics to the oxygen factory we built to provide life-saving treatment for Covid, we will have to pull out all of our volunteers and support, and these facilities may well have to close completely.”
Lastly, let me say this: I do not believe that this is a “red-wall” or “blue-wall” issue. It is not, and should not be, a matter of party politics at all. It is a matter of judgment and, in my view, common humanity. For millions of men, women and, in particular, children around the world, aid is their lifeblood. I do not pretend that UK aid can do it all, but it can make a substantial contribution, as we have seen over the past few years.
In short, I believe that we should keep to the course that we set in 2015. Above all, we should at least have the opportunity to reject these damaging cuts by the Government, obeying the usual parliamentary rules and allowing a vote in both the Commons and the Lords.
Lord Fowler (CB)
My Lords, this has been an important debate and, first and foremost, I thank everyone who has taken part in it. It may have been truncated but it showed quite clearly the concern that there is on this issue.
The Minister said that the debate had attracted a large number of speakers—which was true; it had—but he rather failed to mention that, of the 43 Back-Bench speakers whom it had attracted, not one of them supported the Government’s position. That is perhaps of some significance and might be fed back to the Government. I might just add that I get the distinct impression that the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, was not exactly knocked over in the rush of Ministers to get to the Dispatch Box—but that is perhaps an unworthy thought.
There was one part of the Minister’s reply that I entirely disagreed with: namely, when he said that it was perfectly sensible for the Government to be acting in Parliament in the way that they are. Perhaps he will explain one day, if that is the case, why, in November of last year, the two most senior Ministers in the Government—the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Foreign Secretary—both pledged that the Government would introduce legislation. The Chancellor said that
“we do intend to look at bringing forward appropriate legislation in due course.”—[Official Report, Commons, 25/11/20; col. 870.]
and, the next day, we heard the Foreign Secretary say that
“we will need to bring forward legislation in due course.”—[Official Report, Commons, 26/11/20; col. 1018.]
I think that those count as pledges and I am not quite sure how the Minister thinks that they have been carried out.
I will pick out just one or two speeches from what has been said—an impossible task. The noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, had the courage to resign from the Government over this issue, which is a very brave act for a young politician. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, that the person we miss most at the moment is Lord Judd, and I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, on bringing the Act to the statute book.
The effect of the cuts has been fully explained. I will not even try to precis them but the effect on malaria was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman; the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, raised the needs of Nigeria and Sudan; the noble Lord, Lord Patel, raised science and research; the noble Lord, Lord Herbert, raised the human losses through TB; and the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, raised the impact on children. The list goes on and on.
In the end, we come back to the point raised by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, with all his authority. He said that the parliamentary process on this proposal of the Government has been ignored and ground into the dust. It is very difficult to disagree with that—it has, and the Government have a great deal to answer for on this. As I said in my opening speech, it would be better if this does not go to law but if it is not to, it would be much better if the Government now—at this 11th hour—changed their stance. They must have got an impression from today’s debate of how it is going. It is not going well. If I was the Whip sitting there, I would not be saying, “This is a great debate and all our policies have been endorsed”; none of their policies on this have been endorsed. I have to tell the Whip, and the Minister in particular, that this is not untypical.
What is needed now is a debate in both Houses and a vote in each of them, and I hope the Government will agree to that. I do not often call in aid the Speaker of the House of Commons but that is exactly what he was calling for as well. I cannot see that, morally, the Government can do anything other than that. The way in which they are behaving at the moment is neither satisfactory nor acceptable. If they want a further incentive, I say to them that we will not give up on this issue—we will not just go away. This issue will continue because everyone in this House feels very strongly about it. I hope that that message is registered by the Government and their Ministers.
I thank everyone for their contributions. This has been a very important and valuable debate. It was made so by the contributions made here, however brief they were.