Draft International Development Association (Seventeenth Replenishment: Additional Payments) Order 2016

Nadhim Zahawi Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2016 General Committees

[Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. The Minister refreshingly outlined what the Committee is considering in plain English and I thank him for that. He spoke of the three questions that we would ask, but there is a fourth. Given the mounting pressure that we are putting on the World Bank and the IDA, what proportion of the five or 10-year budget does this £350 million represent, and which other countries are contributing the balance?

International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill

Nadhim Zahawi Excerpts

Friday 12th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Michael Moore]

I have given way several times, so I will make a little progress before I allow the hon. and learned Gentleman to intervene.

The duty that we have to our constituents sits alongside a basic duty to help the poorest in the world with food, water, shelter and medical assistance. If anybody doubts that, they should see that the statistics that confront us are harrowing. The World Bank estimated that in 2010, 400 million children and 1.2 billion people across the world were living in extreme poverty on less than $1.25 a day. Others have estimated that between 2008 and 2012, 33 million people were internally displaced within their countries as a result of conflict and 143 million people were internally displaced because of disasters.

The effects of climate change are becoming increasingly obvious in the developing world. We desperately need to help developing countries to make the adaptations that are required to cope with climate change. Over the past 15 years, under the millennium development goals, we have rightly seen a new focus on assistance for women in the areas of education and health. Too many women across the globe do not have access to education or to the basic medical services to which they ought to be entitled. Day in, day out, we see the important work that is done by NGOs, the Department for International Development and others in humanitarian crises around the world, whether in Syria, Gaza, the Philippines following last year’s typhoon or Iraq.

[Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)]

One has only to ask the Christians, Yazidis or the Syrians in Dohuk what aid means to them. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that embedding an expert from the Department for International Development in the Ministry of Interior in that part of the world, where there is a clear and present danger to our security, is equally as important as the hardware we are delivering to the peshmerga?

[Michael Moore]

The hon. Gentleman has spent some time in Iraq in recent weeks, so I value his insight. He makes an important suggestion, and I am sure that colleagues in the Department have discussed the matter with him and will continue to debate it. He also illustrates how widely different levels of support can be given, which is important.

Development assistance makes a difference. The World Bank estimates that there are 700 million fewer people in extreme poverty now than there were three decades ago. Development assistance saves lives; it transforms lives. Used wisely, it creates the right conditions for economic growth, because the most powerful tool to take people out of poverty is to give them the means to look after themselves.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Brown]

We can talk about other areas of policy, but let me remind the House that every party made a promise. Every party debated and discussed this, and every party decided that they would legislate so that aid was a requirement at 0.7% and that the Government would honour that, so the hon. Gentleman is saying to his own party that it made a mistake in doing so. If that is his view, let him have the debate with his own party.

Let me respond to the point about cost-effective aid. I do not think the hon. Gentleman knows this figure, but the average amount of aid for education—I will come to health in a minute—for a sub-Saharan African child, in all the poorest countries of Africa, from the international aid agencies, Britain and America, put together is $13 a year per child. We spend £5,000 a year on the education of a child in Britain. The average amount of aid for a child in Africa, at $13, is barely enough to pay for a second-hand textbook, and he is somehow suggesting that this is not cost-effective and is too much.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Brown]

I will give way once more and then I will move on.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

If we take a leadership position on this and enshrine it in law and then other countries follow suit, would that not also give the NGOs working on the ground much more clarity and predictability on spending and planning for smart aid for all the good causes that the right hon. Gentleman talks about?

[Mr Brown]

The hon. Gentleman puts absolutely the right argument, which I will now come to. By legislating in this House, we could be a catalyst for other countries to do more. We would be in a position for the long term to say to countries and Governments who are not spending enough domestically on education, health and anti-poverty programmes that we will match whatever extra money they give over a longer period of time. We would be giving certainty to our aid budget for many years ahead. It seems to me that those who are protesting today also ignore the fact that on average we spend only about £1.50 per child—all aid agencies put together—on the vaccination programme in Africa.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nadhim Zahawi Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

I very much welcome that question. The hon. Lady is absolutely right to say that one of the key challenges in DRC is to blend together what we are doing from a humanitarian perspective with the country’s longer-term development needs. That is why we are keen to see a long-lasting peace settlement there. I can assure her that alongside the work on the humanitarian effort we are looking at what we can do with partners on the development effort, including in education.

[Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)]

2. What recent assessment she has made of the humanitarian situation in Syria. [R]

[The Secretary of State for International Development (Justine Greening)]

The humanitarian crisis in Syria has reached catastrophic proportions. Since the start of the conflict, over 100,000 people have been killed, 2.1 million have become refugees, and nearly 7 million people within Syria are in need of urgent humanitarian assistance.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

Let me declare an interest as a member of the International Rescue Committee’s policy and advocacy committee. Given that 60% of Syrian refugees are living outside refugee camps, what steps are the Department taking to ensure that there is adequate support for urban refugees and the communities that are supporting them?

[Justine Greening]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I think that for some countries the total is possibly in excess of 70%. In Jordan, for every refugee who is in the Zaatari camp, there are four outside it. We are therefore working very closely with Governments such as Jordan’s through the World Bank trust fund that we helped to set up—we launched it when I was at the World Bank just a couple of weekends ago—to make sure that we have the investment in infrastructure and public services that the host communities need to be able to support not only their own day-to-day lives but those of the many people who have arrived in their midst.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nadhim Zahawi Excerpts

Wednesday 1st February 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I have answered that question many times, but I might point out to the hon. Gentleman that the largest funder of his party has been based offshore.

[Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)]

Q11. Eight million households have to make do with earning £26,000 or less before tax. What message does my right hon. Friend think that we will be sending to those people if we renege on our promise to cap benefits at £26,000 a year?

[The Prime Minister]

There will be many people in the country who criticise the benefit cap, saying, “Actually, £26,000, £500 a week, is too high.” I think it is fair, I think it is right, but I think that people expect their politicians to make it clear that you are better off in work than you are on benefits. Plenty of people are excluded from the cap because they are on disability living allowance, not able to work and the rest of it, but if you can work you should not be better off on benefits. That is a simple principle, and I find it amazing that the Labour party cannot agree. One more go? One little nod? Nothing.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nadhim Zahawi Excerpts

Wednesday 7th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

The hon. Gentleman is a Birmingham Member of Parliament, as am I, and, like me, he will have received representations from the diaspora in Birmingham on that specific point. I had the chance to visit Lahore in January, and I will carefully consider what he has said and see whether additional action is required.

[Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)]

2. What steps he is taking to ensure transparency of his Department’s expenditure on aid.

[The Secretary of State for International Development (Mr Andrew Mitchell)]

I launched the aid transparency guarantee on 3 June, which will ensure that UK and developing country citizens have full information about British aid.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I am sure my right hon. Friend is aware of recent surveys showing that, in these difficult times, public support for international aid is waning. Does he agree that if we are to win the argument for his Department’s budget in the court of public opinion, we have to ensure that the transparency agenda is linked to achieving the goals of the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office?

[Mr Mitchell]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, and it is always important to underline that there is strong cross-party commitment to this important budget partly for moral reasons, but also because it is very much in our national self-interest. My hon. Friend will have heard the words of the Foreign Secretary and myself about the importance of wiring more closely together defence, diplomacy and development, and he has my assurance that we will continue to do that with great care.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nadhim Zahawi Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd June 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I would much rather sell the shares in the banks to the hon. Gentleman’s constituents. I believe in popular capitalism, and there might be an opportunity to do that. Clearly, important decisions will have to be made to ensure that we get the maximum amount of money back for the taxpayer, who has had to put so much money into the banks, and that we have a fully competitive banking system that serves business in this country so that it does not get ripped off by the banks. At the same time, privatising those banks back into the private sector where they belong can help encourage popular capitalism once again.

[Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)]

Q6. Will the Prime Minister join me in congratulating Denys Shortt of Stratford-on-Avon on his nomination as entrepreneur of the year in the Ernst & Young competition—a well-earned accolade? On the question of earnings, was the Prime Minister surprised to learn that so many people in the public sector earn more than he does?

[The Prime Minister]

I join my hon. Friend in congratulating his constituent. Transparency on pay is an important principle, because it is good for democracy and accountability if we know how much people in the public sector are earning. I also think that it will help us to control public spending. When people see how much people are paid in the public sector, the pressure will be on to keep top pay levels down. It would also be worth while having a maximum multiple of 20 times earnings; we are holding a review to get that done. People at the top of a public sector organisation should not earn more than 20 times what people at the bottom earn. It is that sort of progressive idea that we are looking forward to introducing.