International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill

Mark Lazarowicz Excerpts

Friday 5th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

As always, there is logic in what my hon. Friend says, but, as Madam Deputy Speaker has said, I will not go down the route of making comparisons between this Bill and any other Bill that may or may not be discussed in due course. Over the coming weeks, I shall try to work out a convincing response to my hon. Friend’s intervention.

Cross-party consensus often results in rather woolly legislation. My concern, like that of my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), is that this Bill is an exercise in tokenism; it is gesture politics. It is about raising expectations beyond what is actually going to be delivered by the Bill itself. Clause 1 sets down a statutory duty. Normally, a breach of statutory duty is something against which an individual or an organisation can litigate. They can sue in the courts against the Government for being in breach of a statutory duty. Clauses 2 and 3 negate that possibility. What they say is that notwithstanding the statutory duty set out in clause 1, there is no remedy in law; the only remedy is through a report to Parliament. There is not even a requirement for a debate. The promoters and supporters of the Bill see this as a fantastic breakthrough in law-making. They believe that they now have a new statutory duty to meet a target, but when one looks at the detail of it, one sees that it is a statutory duty without any right or ability to enforce it.

When I was a law student, I was told that there was no point in having a command in law without a sanction. It seems that this Bill fails to deliver an effective sanction against a failure to fulfil the duty set out in clause 1—whether or not one supports that duty. I fear that this Bill shows that we in this House are out of touch with the wishes of the British people, and it will, in the end, disappoint in practice.

As people realise the distorting effect that this measure will have on other spending plans, hostility towards it will increase. In its report on the autumn statement of 2013, the Treasury Committee said:

“Ring-fencing, by definition, requires that the balance of public expenditure restraint and cuts be borne in the rest of public expenditure. Each successive year of public expenditure restraint results in an increase in ring-fenced spending as a proportion of the total. The smaller non-ring-fenced areas in turn have to bear a higher proportion of any savings in subsequent years. The IFS has shown that non-ring-fenced expenditure may fall from 61.6% in 2010-11 to around 50% in 2018-19 of total Departmental Expenditure Limits.”

The Committee cites as a specific example the fact that overseas development expenditure as a percentage of departmental expenditure in 2010-11 was 2.2% but it is expected to have almost doubled to 4% by 2018-19, a far higher percentage increase than in any other area of public expenditure. I do not think that fits in with the priorities of the people and I do not think that has been spelt out clearly enough, if at all, by the promoters of the Bill or by my right hon. Friend the Minister in his all-too-brief remarks on Report.

There is another important point about ring-fencing. As the Treasury Committee has said, it reduces the discipline on spending in the areas subject to it. The rigour of negotiations between the Department and the Treasury on allocations will be weakened since it is known by both sides in advance that the spending is protected. When there is ring-fenced expenditure, a departmental Minister cannot go before a Cabinet Committee and say that they need more money to spend on a programme and, when the Chief Secretary to the Treasury asks where they are going to get the money from, point out where another Department is wasting a lot of money.

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

Leaving aside the general validity or otherwise of the hon. Gentleman’s argument, does he not accept that such Bills have a positive aspect as they can encourage other countries to follow suit and ensure that they have a level of spending that means that we can work together worldwide? Is that not a good thing about a Bill and is it not a good idea?

[Mr Chope]

That takes me back to the debate we had in this House on the climate change legislation, when my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) and I, along with three other Members, voted against Third Reading. One of the arguments in favour of the Bill was that it would set a global example and everybody would follow us. What has happened is quite the opposite. We have put on our hair shirts and increased the subsidies for electricity, thereby increasing the costs to consumers, whereas the rest of the world has carried on as though nothing much has happened. I do not see any evidence of other precedents that shows that the high-minded idea of setting an example means that everyone will follow us. We have already been spending roughly 0.7% of GDP on overseas aid, as has been said earlier, and very few big countries, if any, are following our example.