0.7% Official Development Assistance Target

Neil O'Brien Excerpts

Tuesday 8th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Neil O’Brien (Harborough) (Con) [V]]

The last year has had unprecedented effects on our economy, our public services and the world, and it has left us facing some profound choices this autumn. For all the reasons that numerous Members have mentioned in the debate, none of us wants to have to make these changes to international aid spending, but if we look at the promises we have made, we will see that we face some very difficult choices this autumn. We have promised to help children catch up on their education, and tomorrow we will have a debate in which numerous Members will say that they want to spend more on that. We have promised to catch up on the NHS backlog, which has inevitably built up during a year in which nurses, doctors and everyone working in the NHS have worked overtime and worked their socks off. They have been under an unprecedented level of strain, which has caused a large backlog in NHS demand.

We also face long-standing questions such as the crisis in social care in local government. Again and again in my surgeries, people come to me to complain about squalid conditions, the difficulty of accessing care and the impossible burdens of paying for care. Last but not least—and I declare an interest here—there is the whole question of levelling up and the many things that we promised to do to change the grotesque inequalities in life expectancy and the grotesque differences in income levels and opportunity around this country.

We have many, many promises to keep. Over the last year, we have done unprecedented things to save jobs and livelihoods—we have spent like never before—and because of that, we now face some very difficult choices. I am not somebody who decries the value of aid. I can see that it does much good around the world, and we will continue to be one of the world’s biggest spenders. None the less, I think that to be in government is to make choices. We face difficult choices, and we have many promises to keep on lots of fronts.

Ultimately, all of us are elected to serve the people and to be servants of the people. It is clear to me from every poll I see and every conversation I have that the public know that we have to make choices. They know that we have to prioritise, and the things that they tell me they want to prioritise the most are our health service and giving opportunities and jobs to the places that need them. These are horrible choices to have to make. I salute all colleagues on the other side of this argument who have come to a different view from mine. None the less, with a heavy heart, I think that this is the right thing to do because of the difficult choices that we face.