Aid: Anti-Corruption Measures

Lord Robathan Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd April 2019 Grand Committee

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

My Lords, I shall perforce be brief speaking in the gap, but I am grateful to my noble friend Lord McInnes for calling this debate. I have limited, and rather outdated, experience of the developing world. I used to be chairman of an organisation called the Halo Trust, which was and may still be the world’s largest charity engaged in lifting landmines and clearing the debris of conflict from the developing world. I saw the work it did and was very impressed. I was also a founder member of the International Development Committee in the other place and spent six or seven years on it. I saw dedicated people doing excellent work on our behalf.

I believe we have a Christian duty to help those less well off than ourselves. I suspect that the right reverend Prelate, and perhaps others in the room, would agree with me, because we are extraordinarily well off and we must help other people. However, I shall give a little story. I am older than I would wish, but 50 years and more ago, at school, we had an excellent organisation called Brothers to All Men. I do not know whether it still exists. It was a Christian charity that dug wells in the developing world for those who had no access to clean water. I was so impressed that I put pennies, or perhaps even shillings, in a money box—do noble Lords remember money boxes?—to support that charity. When I was on the DfID committee—this was 15-odd years ago—we saw wells that had been dug with British aid money around the developing world.

I now see advertisements on the television imploring me to give money to charities to dig wells around the developing world. The one point I wish to add to the debate, which I have much enjoyed listening to, which perhaps the Minister will answer is: what has been going on for 50 years? Travelling around the developing world when on the DfID committee, I saw the tanks, the fighter aircraft, the conflict and the Mercedes cars provided for politicians, but I have still seen people who have no access to clean drinking water. That should have been happening through their Governments over the past 50 years.

I know it is a very difficult situation, but—I say to my noble friend Lord McInnes, that this is what the debate is all about—what can the Government do to ensure that the countries we assist with every good intention actually spend that money on helping the people they are meant to help? That includes all Governments around the world, including in developing countries.