International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill

Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale Excerpts

Friday 6th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale (Lab)]

I wrote to the noble Lord when he left the Foreign Office because I had so much respect for the contribution he had made to this House. However, I find his attempt to filibuster this Bill really quite disappointing. Not only has there been a Second Reading debate where a clear majority of noble Lords spoke in favour of the Bill rather than against it, there has also been a debate on the report last year of the Economic Affairs Committee in which a clear majority of noble Lords spoke against its conclusions based on their experience and on evidence that perhaps was not heard by the committee. The noble Lord is simply filibustering this Bill, making speeches that are inappropriate, and he is losing the respect that he once had from many on this side of the Chamber.

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

I appreciate the contribution that the noble Lord makes, but I have not spoken against the Bill; I am speaking in favour of it. I am saying that here is a Bill full of excellent intentions but which could, if we allow it to go unamended by this kind of amendment and the amendments that we will go on to debate today, fall to the danger of being bound by the thinking of yesterday. I beg noble Lords to understand that modern thinking about development takes us away from making it the prime duty—if it is the first “the”, or the prime target, if it is the second “the”—to increase overseas development assistance or pin it to 0.7% of GNI.

[Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale]

Will the noble Lord accept that the clause does not use the word “prime”, either with the first “the” or the second “the”? It does not say “prime” in the way he is quoting.

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

I am sorry; I am not quite sure what point the noble Lord is making. I am trying to deliver the last sentence of my contribution and I do not understand why the noble Lord feels that it is right to keep interrupting.

I am sure that your Lordships’ House is the place that can refine and improve a Bill and will not try to knock down or contain attempts to improve it, as I believe this amendment does. We have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Butler, and we have heard many wise voices from our Back Benches. We have heard from major committees in other countries, from the Dutch and German ministries and from House of Commons committees that there is a danger of too much emphasis being put on overseas development assistance as “the” target and “the” duty, which could badly distort our development priorities. Today, we need new priorities, and the Bill should reflect them and not reject them. That is why I am grateful to those noble Lords who are prepared to hear some doubts about an otherwise noble and well intentioned Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

The fact is that no form of public spending should have a guaranteed percentage of GDP or of GNI—not just aid but, as we have said, not even defence.

[Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale]

Will the noble Lord accept that the noble Lord who is proposing the Bill showed some respect to the House in summing up the debate very briefly and not repeating arguments that had been made at an earlier stage—instead referring noble Lords to read those arguments from the report of the Second Reading and other debates. Will he please show the same respect?

[Lord Lawson of Blaby]

I was not repeating myself in the slightest. I was making a number of additional points which are highly relevant to the Bill, to this amendment and to subsequent amendments. However, I will draw to a conclusion to allow other noble Lords to take part, if they wish to, in the debate.

The question is, which is more important: good intentions or good outcomes? I know that those who are keen on the Bill as it stands have the best intentions—I do not deny that for a moment. I know that people who support it are certainly well intentioned. Alas, however, as Members of one of the two Houses of Parliament, we have to consider not what the intentions are—I think we are all well intentioned; most of us have good intentions, whatever side of the House we are on—but what are the likely outcomes. If the outcomes are damaging—which they are in the Bill as it stands—the fact that they are well intentioned is no help at all.

In conclusion, we are very privileged to have the noble and right reverend Lord, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, among us. He knows what the road to hell is paved with.

It is the custom in this House for there to be few Divisions on amendments—they can come at a later stage, when we come to Report. At this stage, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.