Building Stability Overseas Strategy

Lord Patten Excerpts

Tuesday 30th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Patten]

My Lords, I do not want to do the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, any damage in the eyes of his party, but I have to say that in his tip-top speech I could not find a word that I did not agree with. He has directed us to look at the Building Stability Overseas policy. The policy, of course, was launched during the Arab spring, which has turned into something of an Arab winter all too quickly for all too many in the Arab lands. Take the plight, for example—and we could give many—of minority religious groups. There is not much of a spring for the Copts in Egypt, for Zoroastrians hiding out in Iran and Iraq, for minority Muslims where there is a majority of Sunnis, for the last remaining Chaldean Catholics in Mosul or for evangelicals wherever they have managed to get a toe-hold. These are exactly the sort of minorities that the noble Lord cares about and has directed our attention to tonight. They are the sorts of minorities that the strategy tries to help in the fragile conflict-affected states that he has so effectively referred to.

I support the aims of the strategy, launched as it was when there were high hopes for an Arab spring, but, alas, those hopes were anchored in what has turned out to be quicksand. That makes the tripartite ministerial efforts of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Ministry of Defence and DfID all the more important, 18 months or so on from when the policy was launched. The kind of stuff that BSOS, to use the shorthand, tries to do—for example, giving early warnings of looming trouble in troubled states, from the Balkans and the Caucasus via those Arab lands to Somalia, Pakistan and back—is indeed very important.

This is all conducted within our foreign aid contributions. I had better be brave and out myself: as a Tory Back-Bencher, I am actually in favour of the present level of foreign aid contributions that the Government are making. I am told that there are not all that many of us. Ah, I see that my noble friend Lord Bates has come out as well; we are all coming out on the Tory Benches tonight. That makes two of us, but I am told that there are not all that many of us among the Daily Mail-reading classes in either another place or this place. Having so outed myself, however, that gives me the opportunity and the right to say to my noble friend Lord Ahmad how profoundly unhappy I am with some of the allocation of that aid—to an India, for example, which, although I welcome Indian money coming into this country, is busy buying up the UK’s steel and motor car sectors while at the same time chunks of taxpayers’ funds are flowing back to it. Those funds would be much better spent in meeting the ends of the Building Stability Overseas Strategy.

That said, as the strategy develops with the limited funds that it has, it must develop quite a way beyond just becoming an exemplar of joined-up, good cross-Whitehall work. It would be all the more effective if it were to give a greater role to charities, voluntary organisations and NGOs—call them what one will—in policy formulation as the next positive step. The Foreign Secretary, my right honourable friend Mr Hague, says that the Government do not have all the answers in this context. He is right; we all know that. The strategy itself says that it values partnership but, if you have a quick look at section 10, you will see that while there are some words saying what good things partnerships are, it is a bit of an empty vessel in explaining just how partnerships with voluntary organisations can help to develop policy in a specific way.

That is not to say that I think that we should have a romantic view of all non-governmental organisations, charities and the voluntary sector. There are some rather strange ones around with very bad habits—at the lowest level, those who unleash those chuggers on the streets. There are certainly some charities, voluntary organisations and NGOs that spend disproportionate sums on publicity campaigns that I think could be used in the local context, as the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, has pointed out, and there are others that have very high cost-to-income ratios in what they do, for all the world like the high cost-to-income ratios in some bad investment banks in the past.

The best NGOs, however, are very good indeed and we should listen to what they have to say. The best work very much with the warp and weft of local communities, and it is the local that the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, directed our attention to in his powerful speech. The best have very tight cost-to-income ratios and are working all the time to grind them down. The best do a lot of thinking and have a very hard policy edge, carefully thought through, rather than spending the money that they raise on expensive media campaigns.

Most importantly and significantly of all, the best NGOs very bravely put themselves in the front line in harm’s way. We have seen this happen with the staff of charities, voluntary organisations and NGOs losing their lives in Iraq, Pakistan and, notably recently, Afghanistan. Although they are rightly cautious and try to protect their women and men who are very much on the front line, I heard only this week that charities are now pulling people out from the front line in Kenya in advance of the general elections there which are thought to be about to foment no end of violence and mayhem.

In this context, NGOs are one of us in terms of helping because many, if not the majority, of state, peace and civil society building activities are already being outsourced to non-governmental organisations working locally. If that is the case, a bit more formal involvement for them in policy formulation would be a good thing. As we know, just because you put input into policies, it does not have to be taken into account, but I think we would benefit greatly from firmer involvement by non-governmental organisations in developing in a very constructive way the next stages of this excellent government approach on building security overseas as it matures to the next stage.