International Disaster Relief

Patrick Grady Excerpts

Tuesday 6th February 2018 Westminster Hall

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. These days, it is something of a rare pleasure for me to take part in a Westminster Hall debate, but I received special dispensation from the Scottish National party Whips Office to do so today. I congratulate the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie) on securing this debate. I was our party’s international development spokesperson in the previous Parliament, and I am pleased to have the opportunity to contribute. Earlier this morning, by happy coincidence, I was meeting representatives of Scotland’s International Development Alliance. All in, it has been a bit of a time warp.

The debate is timely, as other Members have said, including the hon. Member for Stirling (Stephen Kerr). The need for disaster response has, sadly, never been greater. In particular, in recent years the displacement of people by hunger, conflict and climate change has put the whole international development and disaster relief system to the test.

Aid can of course be shorthand for many different things, in particular in the context of disaster relief—relief, rebuilding, resilience, root causes and our responsibilities. Relief in the immediate aftermath, again as others have said, is vital, especially in the face of a natural disaster or something unseen such as the tsunamis of recent years and, to a lesser extent, the Ebola outbreak. Like other Members, I pay tribute to the work of the DEC and the recently established DEC in Scotland. They bring together the best of the agencies and the best of the skills and experience to avoid duplication and to ensure maximisation of the funds donated by the public. The UK Government can do the same thing through the UN agencies.

The Chair of the International Development Committee, the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), made a point about cash transfers, which are important in all such situations but particularly in immediate disaster relief. He outlined the reasons for cash transfers, which include the ability of affected individuals to spend the money to meet their own needs, and the impact that that then has in revitalising the local economy and in terms of the very basic human dignity in doing that. Rather than us as paternalistic donors deciding what is good for people, we give them the power, recognising that, even in the midst of calamity, they have the option to decide and choose for themselves.

Moving on to the rebuilding phase, that is a particular challenge. I only vaguely remember the statistic, but at one time someone might be a refugee or displaced person for three or four years; now, for a displaced person on the Syrian border, for example, or someone displaced by famine in one of the central African countries, it can be for up to 18 years—an entire generation. Therefore, rebuilding, reconstruction and investment, in particular in education—again as we have heard—are vital.

On the reaction to Hurricane Irma—the effect on UK overseas territories and their GDP, and rebuilding—it is not that we should not give them money. They are dependencies of the United Kingdom, and we would give money if—God forbid—something happened here in the United Kingdom. We have responded to tragedies that have happened on our own doorstep, but we do not try to count that as official development assistance or aid, because that is part of our global network and definition. As the Chair of the International Development Committee, the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby, and other speakers said, if there are to be changes to those definitions, they have to be agreed through a multilateral process. There has to be consensus among the donor countries and the change has to be driven by overriding humanitarian principles, in particular the sustainable development goals. I might come back to say something about that in a bit more detail if time allows.

One of the challenges is getting the resilience in the first place: making sure that communities that are at risk from conflict, famine or climate change have a degree of resilience so that these issues can be nipped in the bud. DFID has the challenge of delivering the remainder of the aid budget and trying to keep it as significant as it can be in supporting local grassroots communities—for example, sustainable agricultural developments, so that farmers are not suddenly hit by a lack of artificial fertilisers but are in a position where they can grow sustainable crops even in the midst of climate change, drought or floods.

The root causes have to be tackled. Why are people caught up in disasters? Usually it is because there is a root cause somewhere. It has been said that climate change is the biggest challenge—it threatens to roll back progress that had been made toward the millennium development goals, and potentially towards the sustainable development goals. Conflict situations are a challenge, too. Although it may not be directly applicable to this debate, research by the Scottish National party has shown that 13 times as much was spent on bombing Libya than was spent on the rebuilding effort. Sadly, those statistics can be found elsewhere, too.

We have to take a little responsibility for why some of the very often preventable disaster situations arise. It is important that the spending is there to meet needs when they arise, but it should not have to be at the expense of investment in tackling root causes and the resilience stage of the aid process. That is why I welcome the cross-party consensus on the 0.7% target, but there are questions to be asked about exactly how that figure is defined and spent.

One of my repeated concerns, which touches on the point about UN peacekeeping, is about the way that the Government continue to double-count money that is spent towards both the 0.7% target and the 2% NATO target. To some extent, that may be permitted under some readings of OECD rules, but there is a danger of conflation of the two, and that both arms of expenditure will lose out. I have my own views on military expenditure, starting with Trident, but no matter what one’s views on those things are, as far as possible, efforts should be made to keep those budgets separate, or at least properly and transparently accounted for, so that, whether in Committee, Westminster Hall or elsewhere, we can scrutinise them.

That speaks a little more widely to the mission creep of other Departments and the claims that they are starting to put on the 0.7% budget. It should not be a cover because the Foreign and Commonwealth Office struggles to meet some of its other requirements for aspects of diplomatic missions. The FCO should be resourced; the Department for International Development should be resourced; the Ministry of Defence should be resourced. It is perfectly possible to find ways of doing that if we look at some of the big, unnecessary capital expenditure, not least Trident—the Tories can tick off their bingo box. If the other Departments are to spend a greater share of the 0.7%, they have to be held to the same standards of transparency and the same levels of scrutiny as DFID has been over the years.

I conclude with a thought on the idea of aid money serving the national interest. In my previous guise I used to repeatedly ask Ministers for a definition of the national interest, because I do not see how it can be anything other than the meeting and delivery of the sustainable development goals. How is the United Kingdom’s national interest not served by building a more peaceful and sustainable world, where people are less susceptible to shocks of conflict, climate change and famine, where girls are educated, people have access to safe running water and the environment is protected? That is the national interest. If there is some other national interest that has been hinted at when Members says, “This is what aid should be,” I would be interested to know what that is. That would be useful to hear.

It is encouraging that there is usually a cross-party consensus on this kind of issue; we have managed to hear praise for both Tony Blair and George W. Bush in the debate so far. At the very least, that is an indication of our intention to come together to act not just in our enlightened self-interest, but in the best interest of people who very often find themselves in situations that are no fault of their own in developing parts of the world.