UK Foreign Aid Programme

Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick Excerpts

Thursday 1st July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick (CB)]

My Lords, we are all grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, for allowing us to express our anguish and our fury at the contempt in which the Government have held Parliament and the abuse of their responsibilities to the poor. As a member of the Global Partnership for Education ambassadorial group, let me commend the Government on the £460 million announced at the G7 summit. I hope that they will take seriously the opportunity of the replenishment at the end of July, with the Government of Kenya, to get to $5 billion.

However, despite more money being added for girls’ education in that fund, many millions of children will continue to die, year in, year out, from dirty water. Are the Government aware of the tweet issued this week by the Republican, conservative former governor of North Carolina, now the director of the World Food Programme, David Beasley? He pointed out that an extra 41 million people will die and starve this year as a result of the impact of Covid and the lack of additional aid resources. The cost, he points out, is just $6 billion, or roughly £4 billion—in other words, roughly equivalent to the Government’s cuts. In that case, are the Government happy to see 41 million supplementary deaths on the back of their attempts to supply more money to drive ships around Ukraine to irritate the Russians or to show how strong we can be in the South China Sea? Let us not pretend that being global Britain means that we show off our strength elsewhere while we allow others to die on the back of our attempts to look strong.