Sustainable Development Goals

Michael Moore Excerpts

Wednesday 28th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Michael Moore (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith). I welcome the fact that the Opposition have brought forward this debate, if not the particular motion. This is an important subject, and I agree with them that it is regrettable that there is not more opportunity in Government time to debate these important matters. However, I really regret the tone in which the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) chose to introduce the debate. She disregarded the consensus that has existed on this subject over a number of years, and I am really surprised that she did so; it was like a hackneyed replay of the playbook that we saw before the last general election.

When the draft Bill to enshrine the spending of 0.7% of our GDP on the United Nations target for official development assistance was introduced, it was clear that it was intended to create a dividing line between the then Labour Government and the Conservative Opposition. I give credit to my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) for the rather nifty piece of footwork that he employed in committing the Opposition to supporting it. It was easy for me, as the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, to make that commitment. The Bill therefore had cross-party support.

In the past, I have credited the Labour Government with the fact that they started the debate and set the track for us to follow in getting to the 0.7% target. However, there was no hint today of Labour acknowledging that leadership and welcoming everyone else into the fold; it was Labour, Labour, Labour and nothing else. I think that people outside this place will judge us harshly if this hard-won consensus cannot be seen to hold. They would have gained no impression at all from the hon. Member for Wakefield that we had even reached the 0.7% target under the coalition, on the back of the work that the previous Labour Government did.

I set all that out on Second Reading of my private Member’s Bill and on every subsequent occasion. It was my great good fortune to come second in the ballot and to introduce that piece of legislation. Until today, I also regarded it as my great good fortune to have such clear cross-party support, rather than the point scoring that we have now seen. If Labour had wanted to claim leadership on this, it had the chance in government to bring such legislation forward, but it did not actually do it, so Labour Members should not criticise the coalition for not having done it in Government time.

On the point about Labour MPs delivering on this, I must say that they were here in numbers during the passage of my Bill. I am grateful to every last one of them who was here in the Chamber and who voted on all its different stages. Six people voted against it on Second Reading. Seven voted against the money resolution and five voted against it on Third Reading. Any one of the parties on this side delivered more votes than was required. Labour Members were critical of closure motions, but please let us recognise that the passage of the Bill in this place was a joint enterprise.

[Mr Tom Clarke]

The right hon. Gentleman knows that I supported his Bill all the way. If I may say so, he seems unusually proactive this afternoon, but perhaps if he calms down he will acknowledge that the fact that some people—albeit a minority—tried to talk out his Bill on Third Reading shows that there is a case for more development education, starting in this House.

[Michael Moore]

I apologise for surprising the right hon. Gentleman with my tone. I do not want to say that the Opposition started it, but there really is a different kind of tone to the debate today. I thank him for his contribution to the Bill, and for his own track record as a Minister and in piloting the earlier legislation through. He is right to draw attention to the nay-sayers, who I must point out opposed the Bill from both sides of the Chamber—

[Mr O’Brien]

It was Lord Lipsey who opposed it. Labour!

[Michael Moore]

None of them is in the Chamber this afternoon; that is the important point.

The point is that we have now, happily, got the Bill into another place, and I want to pay tribute to my great friend the noble Lord Purvis who is piloting it there. There were two speeches against it on Friday—one from a Conservative peer and one from a Labour peer—so let us please put this nonsense behind us. It is entirely legitimate to scrutinise legislation in that way. It is entirely fair of the hon. Member for Wakefield to ask challenging questions of the Secretary of State, and it is entirely fair of the hon. Member for Llanelli to add to that list of questions. Let us have more time to debate and scrutinise, just as the International Development Committee, chaired by my right hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Sir Malcolm Bruce), has done, with cross-party support, and just as the Independent Commission for Aid Impact is doing within the Department. All those things matter, because outside this Chamber the consensus is not as wholehearted as we believe it to be. It is therefore important that we can show what aid is for and show that we, as custodians of taxpayers’ money, are looking after that money properly. We have a proud position in the United Kingdom. We can claim international leadership in this regard, but it is a joint endeavour; let us not squander it.

[Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

Given some of the comments made in this debate, may I begin by saying that I firmly believe there are sincere individuals on both sides of this House who have track records of commitment and of speaking in this House on these issues? However, it is fair to raise sceptical questions, and some of the glossing over of history we have heard is a little rich coming from Government Members. May I gently mention the comments made by the right hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (Michael Moore)? I strongly welcome his effort in bringing in his Bill, but to say that the last Labour Government put this down as a dividing line is very unfair.

I was an adviser in the Department at the time and was very involved with the drafting of our draft Bill. I can tell him with all sincerity that it was brought forward, first, to show leadership and, secondly, to lock in the commitment that the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) later gave. We had reasonable scepticism about what a possible incoming Government might do, given some comments about international development aid that we hear from Members who are not in the Chamber today, and given the record of previous Conservative Governments in slashing DFID’s budget. Every time they had come to office previously, they had merged it back into the Foreign Office, so it was perfectly reasonable for us to set that down.

I welcome the fact that the right hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk introduced his Bill and I welcomed his commitment in opposition, too. I also welcome the Government’s support for his Bill—or at least some Conservative and Liberal MPs came to support it as it went through. But it is a bit rich to gloss over things. The last Government’s leadership took the aid budget to where it was and set up DFID, and it is important to put that on the record.

[Michael Moore]

I wish the hon. Gentleman would not accuse people of “glossing over” things. I invite him to look back at any of the speeches I made, particularly the one on Second Reading, where I laid out, in terms, the Labour party’s record on this issue. I remind him that half a dozen people opposed the Bill, and he needs to be careful what he is suggesting.

[Stephen Doughty]

I am not accusing the right hon. Gentleman; I was accusing some in this House today of glossing over Labour’s record on these issues. Indeed, I have previously welcomed what he did.

Let me deal with the sustainable development goals, the main subject of the debate. It is important that we get back to the base principles. It is in our fundamental common interest, as well as being a moral imperative, to get the sustainable development goals right and to continue to make the case for development in this House. Fundamentally, it is a moral case that everyone is born the same and deserves the same opportunity. People in this country and the world over, including in my constituency—where I regularly have difficult debates on the doorstep about this—are not insulated from the consequences of poverty, conflict and climate change in other countries. We may see that in shifts in migration—we have all seen the terribly tragic events that are repeatedly happening in the Mediterranean; in poverty-driven conflict creating further zones of instability around the world, which can then lead to the risk of young people, including from my constituency, being dragged into fighting for organisations such as ISIS or al-Shabaab; and in terms of disease, as we have all seen with the tragic circumstances of Ebola in west Africa and the consequences of people then travelling around the world.