International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill

Lord Skelmersdale Excerpts

Friday 6th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

I understood the mover of the amendment to accept that it was not what he intended to achieve. He was corrected by the noble Lord who moved this part of the Bill. It is therefore wrong for people to speak to what they wished the amendment to say rather than what it does say.

[Lord Skelmersdale (Con)]

I wonder whether the noble Baroness was listening when the Lord Speaker put the question. She put it very clearly that what we are discussing is the second “the” and not the first.

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

I am sorry if the noble Baroness is worried about this because she has some extremely valid and important commitments to development and aid. If it was the first “the”, it would be “a duty” or “the duty”; if it is the second “the”, it is “a target” or “the target”. We could slice this very thinly. Behind this lies the consideration that I beg the Committee to examine: that is whether, given today’s context where all the important thinking about development is that overseas official aid assistance is a less important instrument for aid, it should be “the target” or “the duty”. I believe that it is wrong to urge the Secretary of State through legislation to stick to the “the’s” rather than the “a’s”.

I say that not just because the excellent committee report by my colleagues—I did not serve on that committee—gave a whole series of very substantial reasons why one should be cautious about making it “the” target, but because of some important further reasons which are developing all the time and can be analysed by looking at the extremely learned and focused thinking going on today about how to promote development and how our United Kingdom can make its maximum effort towards promoting development in the developing world. I want to give two reasons which I hope the Committee will accept are relevant to changing from an absolute priority target; that is, from “the” to “a”. I hope that noble Lords will tolerate me giving the reasons, and indeed I will be rather sad if people are not prepared even to examine these issues.

The first is this. Most economists who have studied the issue and most of the reports that are coming out today recognise that ODA is only one component of the development effort and that ODA’s relevance to development, in today’s conditions, is declining. Other instruments that require resources are very much more important in promoting development. I mention just overseas security finance, other expenditures which may not be ODA-able such as debt relief, disease research and obviously trade promotion, a range of innovative financing and impact developments. There is also an enormous new range of impact investment that requires resources, while obviously anything that can assist with lower cost green energy is helpful. Indeed, the fall in the oil price is a huge help to developing countries in a way that ODA could not possibly compete with. These are all far more effective—