Integrated Review: Development Aid

Lord German Excerpts

Wednesday 28th April 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord German (LD) [V]]

I refer to my interests in the register. Today’s news that the Government’s global health priority is virtually excluding water, sanitation and hygiene projects shows the impact of the cuts to international aid. Good public health is an essential element of community resilience to disease and infection —just look at the health impact on schools with no running water, where toilet and eating activity is undertaken without any handwashing.

The sad reality is that we now have a smaller pot of money for global development, and added to that is the other reality that big international long-term commitments will take the lion’s share of this smaller pot. This means that smaller charities in the UK will be squeezed out of delivering much-valued projects that are closer to the communities they serve. These are the smaller charities that deliver better value for money than large organisations.

The latest round of Small Charities Challenge Fund and community partnership grant applications has been paused indefinitely. Without confirmation that successful grant applications would be honoured, many charities face having to make immediate decisions on staffing and resources, including redundancies.

These are projects where small charities have invested hundreds of hours in the development and preparation of projects approved by the Government but now in limbo. Pulling the plug on approved projects is costly and damaging to small charities; it is also damaging to the communities they serve in the poorest parts of the world. They now have no hope of recovering the nugatory work they have put into developing projects that the Government determined were valuable. This has devastatingly dashed the hopes of the people who were to be the beneficiaries of these projects.

What reassurance can the Minister give on the future of the Small Charities Challenge Fund and the Community Partnership grant scheme, including those projects that have received approval but no payments as yet?