DfID: Tied Aid

Lord Tugendhat Excerpts

Monday 11th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

I appreciate what the noble Lord has to say, and I hope that he continues to say such things loud and clear, because in a time of austerity there is a clamour of voices asking whether this is the right thing to do. As we meet the 0.7% commitment, which we have built to and kept to, we have a moral obligation to address the difference in the levels of need around the world. There is also the interest in terms of greater stability. If you are addressing the most abject poverty around the world, that helps to stabilise things for everybody, whether in that region or in our own.

[Lord Tugendhat]

Does the Minister agree that Africa is now one of the fastest growing regions in the world and that we should all be very pleased about that? Aid is now a relatively small proportion of the disbursements that go from the developed world to what used to be called the developing world. Remittances and direct investment have grown enormously, and the role of aid is far less significant than it used to be. It is not a question of this Government cutting back on what they have been giving; the extraordinary thing about this Government is that, at a time when they are cutting back on almost everything else, they have been increasing the overseas aid budget by 30%. I find that barely explicable.