Official Development Assistance

Olivia Blake Excerpts

Thursday 9th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab)]

It is incredibly important that we are using this estimates day to debate this subject, because it is an opportunity for us to scrutinise not only spend but the issues behind the decision on this merger, which my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) summarised eloquently.

It will not surprise the House that, as a member of an internationalist party, I am both surprised and horrified by the announcement of the merger of DFID and the FCO and am arguing for the maintenance of the ODA floor at 0.7%. The House will be aware of the importance of protecting this funding for a wide range of reasons, including tackling disparities facing children, women and girls, those with disabilities and in health and education—so important that this floor was part of the Conservative party’s 2019 manifesto.

We have seen across the world failures where diplomacy and development Departments have merged, as my hon. Friend outlined. That is probably due to the difference in expertise and practice of civil servants in those two vocations. While complementary, they are distinct and different. It is important to shine a light on the new responsibilities that this new Department should have, which include ensuring that funding is available for sustainable and green investment to support the countries that will be put most at risk from our own pollution and the climate justice that needs to emerge.

The cynic in me thinks that this decision has been ideologically driven. The concerns of my constituents who have been in touch to express their frustration and confusion over this decision are valid. As a city of sanctuary, we are an internationalist city, which may explain the difference in my experience on the doorstep from that of Government Members. I am concerned by the Secretary of State’s comments about the Government looking to cut £2 billion from the new Department’s budget, with a 30% cut in aid spend across all Departments. That is not what my constituents will be expecting. The reason I am cynical is the vast number of fringe right-wing organisations that have been looking to cut aid budgets, scrap DFID and pull the UK out of the OECD altogether, but no think-tank, think piece or comment can take away the UK’s responsibilities.

Finally, the lack of consultation with the aid sector and staff of DFID and the FCO must call this decision into question. To take this decision during a global pandemic is also questionable, when all minds in the sector are focused on tackling this terrible crisis. Any decision about jobs that is found out via a tweet is very destructive to staff. It leads civil servants to feel irrelevant and their work undervalued. I hope that the Department has taken the time to discuss this with trade unions and that we do not lose this world-class Department.

Climate Justice

Olivia Blake Excerpts

Tuesday 4th February 2020 Westminster Hall

[Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Nadia Whittome) on securing this debate and on giving us an opportunity to discuss the climate crisis. It is the greatest existential threat of our time and climate justice is becoming increasingly urgent. It is timely that this debate has been called ahead of Parliament’s voting on the Government’s Environment Bill. As colleagues know, much has been made of the Government’s ambitious target to decarbonise by 2050, but it is simply a headline. At the moment, it is a plan.

When we talk about climate change, we speak about the climate emergency. The summer saw swathes of the Amazon burn, and Australia is currently fighting the wildfires that have gripped areas the size of our own counties, so we are right to speak in terms of an emergency. However, I fear there is no recognition of that emergency in the Government’s response to the crisis so far beyond declaring one. There is no sense of urgency. There is more CO₂ in our atmosphere now than at any point in human history, so before we pat ourselves on the back for small reductions in production—as has been mentioned, the offshoring of our share hides the truth on consumption—we must remember that we need to up our game and set out a radical course of action. We cannot let COP26 be a cop-out. It is our last chance to correct the path to climate disaster.

Locally, Sheffield City Council has declared a climate emergency and has set out a carbon budget with the Tyndall Centre, which shows the city would use its entire budget for the next 20 years in less than six. Rightly, it has set a course to try to get to net zero by 2030. Before Christmas, again, communities across South Yorkshire experienced flooding. The impact of an international crisis played out locally. If the UK was serious about preventing climate breakdown, we would not be seeing more investment going into drilling in new oilfields or building more pipelines. Instead we see UK-headquartered banks and the Government bankrolling fossil fuel extraction and directing more and more finance to fossil fuel companies, rather than solutions to the crisis. If we were serious about climate justice, the Government would regulate and penalise private banks for providing billions for fossil fuel extraction at home and abroad.

Between 2016 and 2018, HSBC gave $57 billion to the fossil fuel industry. Barclays, the biggest funder of fossil fuel infrastructure in Europe, gave almost $25 billion to fossil fuel companies in 2018 alone. The Government offered only £100 million of private investment for renewable energy investment in sub-Saharan Africa in 2018, which shows the difference in scale. Through their campaigns, organisations such as People & Planet and Greenpeace have brought to light the fact that our banks have been acting like fossil fuel companies with the amount of extraction they are financing, showing a determination to see the industry continue. It needs to stop. Without further regulations and legislation for our financial system there will be almost free rein to continue to make our worlds toxic and to continue to push us over the cliff we are balanced on, with temperatures potentially soaring by three degrees, which we know will be catastrophic.

Average wildlife populations have already dropped by 60% in 40 years, so we must act now and take our responsibilities seriously or risk further loss of species and populations. The Government are not exempt, either. In June, the Environmental Audit Committee exposed how UK Export Finance had been using British capital to finance fossil fuel extraction in the global south, undermining the effect of the UK’s carbon emissions cuts and any commitment to climate justice.

The climate crisis is a threat to us all, but we do not all face it equally. In fact, we must remember those who have already tragically lost their lives, swept up in the climate disaster, trying to protect communities and fight for the frontline of public services across the world. The Government need to end their support for climate colonialism and penalise banks that are accelerating climate breakdown at the frontlines. Climate justice absolutely requires recognising and mitigating the worst effects of the crisis and facilitating environmental migration in response to disaster displacement, which is unavoidable at this point. Fundamentally, we need to take a radical approach. Let us take as our starting point the root cause of the issue—where our Government are accelerating and exacerbating climate breakdown. Climate justice means acting now to stem the worst effects of the crisis, and for that we need to take aim at the banks that are choking our future. Our inaction is also choking our future. We continually raise the issue not to try to be a thorn in anyone’s side, but to be the roots that can lead to a shoot of hope for future generations.

[Sir Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

Thanks to the discipline of colleagues, the Front-Bench speakers have approximately 12 minutes each, leaving two minutes at the end for the Member who moved the debate to sum up.

Middle East Peace Plan

Olivia Blake Excerpts

Thursday 30th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dr Murrison]

I thank my hon. Friend for her question. I can tell her that we will go further than that. Although it is not a solution to the situation, which is intolerable, we are putting a huge amount of resource into the Occupied Palestinian Territories right now, through the Palestinian Authority and through the United Nations Relief and Works Agency—UNRWA—in order at least to try to do our bit in stabilising what would otherwise be a completely impossible situation, pending a definitive solution that would restore peace to the middle east.

[Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab)]

The former Foreign Secretary, now the Prime Minister, had planned to convene a summit of European and Arab Foreign Ministers with the Trump Administration to lay out their red lines for the Trump Administration’s peace plan. Can the Minister of State tell us whether that summit ever took place? If not, why not, and what were our red lines?

[Dr Murrison]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question. I hope she has been watching closely the reaction of leaders, particularly in the region—from Saudi Arabia, from Egypt, from the UAE and, yes, from Jordan. If she has, she will have noticed that, broadly speaking and in the round, they are supportive of the fact that the plan has now been published and they look forward to its being—possibly, potentially—the start of a negotiated settlement that would deliver on the imperatives that I have just repeated to the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn).