Official Development Assistance

Oliver Heald Excerpts

Thursday 9th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sir Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)]

The hon. Member for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy) made a strong point about the strength of the work of DFID. The rest of her speech would probably have gone down better with her local constituency Labour party.

My hope, as my hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat) said, is that the merger of DFID and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office will be an opportunity to reaffirm Britain’s role as a compassionate, ambitious and outward-looking leader on the global stage. Britain is known for its development help and does a distinctive form of development. I pay tribute to the current Secretary of State and recent incumbents of the post.

As UNICEF said recently, Britain can be proud of enabling every child to survive, thrive and unleash their full potential. From their championing of 12 years of quality education for every girl, to their commitment to ending preventable child deaths and remaining the largest donor to Gavi, the vaccine alliance, this Government have demonstrated their dedication and support to children around the world. We want to continue that work, and I believe that it will be possible to do it within the new Department. 

I particularly want to pick up on a point that the Chair of the Select Committee made about the views of my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Mrs Latham) on safeguarding. One of the strengths of DFID has been not only that it has delivered this distinctive aid and, of course, much of it helping and empowering women around the world, as well as helping children, but that it has led the way on the importance of safeguarding. It is important that we have the right measures in place to avoid the sort of scandals that we have had with sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment. Over the past 20 years, work has been done in this area, and it seemed to be improving, and then it has happened again. DFID did great work at its London safeguarding summit on 18 October 2018 in driving the collective effort to try to respond to this. The International Development Committee has produced important reports on this matter and it is currently looking at it again.

This history, which goes back 20 years, is something that I became involved in when Oxfam asked me to sit on its independent commission, looking into the events in Haiti. We were able to do a great deal of research, and we found that, in the in-depth research in three countries on women and girls in refugee camps, sexual harassment, exploitation and abuse was quite common and transactional sex was endemic in two of the three countries. There was even a lack of understanding both by aid workers and the recipients of where the line should be drawn in terms of sexual misconduct. For example, one older woman explained that she had to wait in line for food, because the younger women, who were prepared to be girlfriends of the people handing out food, took precedence. To be fair to those at Oxfam, they responded to the crisis with great energy, and they produced a 10 point plan and agreed to all our recommendations in our report. That resulted in a major overhaul of their systems to ensure that standards were maintained.

Now I have a seven-minute speech and I see that I have 22 seconds left. I will just say that I am also on a DFID aid worker ID steering group and I am determined and very much hope that that can continue its work, because we do need to be able to identify aid workers and their history and then put the protections in place.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Mitchell]

The House will understand why I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving me an extra minute, but I have learned during my 30 years in Parliament that, in politics, there is limited point in spending one’s time howling at the moon. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the decision, it has been made, so I will turn now to how best it can be implemented, with the least damage to Britain’s brilliant work and reputation.

I draw the Minister’s attention to the excellent paper produced by Stefan Dercon, who was the chief economist in the Department when I was Secretary of State. I know the Foreign Secretary has had a chance to look at it. I hope the Foreign Office will bear in mind the constructive comments made in that wise and thoughtful paper on how to make the merger work. First It is important to ensure a whole-of-Government approach to the spending of development money. Different Departments spend it, but not consistently, and most of the spend that attracts hostile comment in the press—the spend in China, for example, or the Newton fund—is not spent by DFID. In my first hour as Secretary of State, I stopped all spending to China, unless it was legally incurred. There is a danger that mis-spending by other Departments brings the budget into disrepute with our constituents, and I urge the Government to focus on that point.

Secondly, to ensure an emphasis on the quality of the spend, the ICAI looks at all spending. Its annual report comes out tomorrow, and I urge colleagues to read it. ICAI was set up in the teeth of opposition from the development sector, but it is extremely important for holding to account the quality of spending. It is the taxpayers’ friend, and we must drive up the quality of ODA spend across Government.

[Sir Oliver Heald]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Mitchell]

I am sorry, but I cannot.

Thirdly, DFID’s skill is money. With the best will in the world, the Foreign Office is not that; although populated by the most brilliant diplomats, they are not very good with money and it is not fair to expect Foreign Office officials to take responsibility for running multimillion-pound projects.

The final example I will give is that, to his credit, the Prime Minister has made getting girls into school a priority. I strongly agree. To change our world, educate girls. That is why I set up the girls’ education challenge fund, which was designed to get 1 million girls into school, but looking at the right structures to deliver that is a DFID skill.