UN Sustainable Development Goals

Lord Purvis of Tweed Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

The noble Baroness is right. Unfortunately, it is not just a handful of countries; a lot of countries could fit the description that she put forward. From the perspective of our international development assistance, we are very careful not to provide funding directly to Governments because we know that, where we do, a lot of that money ends up fuelling corruption and rarely reaches the projects on the ground. Our job is to try to find examples of projects that we can support outside national Governments where we can attempt to enable those communities where we are investing to prosper in a way that does not foster corruption in those countries.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, it is not good enough for the Minister to say that he hopes to return to 0.7%. The Government set fiscal tests that would be determined by the OBR. The OBR said in its spring report that those tests had been met for next year and the Government, in their spending review, had set an unallocated £4 billion a year. It would be unacceptable if, as a result of the mini-Budget, this unallocated fund was now raided. Would the Minister not agree that tax cuts for the richest at home meaning raiding the budget for the poorest abroad is morally unacceptable?

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

My Lords, I will not return to 0.7% other than to say that we are very keen to return to it as soon as we are able to.