Official Development Assistance

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Thursday 26th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

First, may I say in relation to East Kilbride, and notwithstanding the pressures we face, we will be expanding the UK Government Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office in East Kilbride because we know the great work that it does and because we are stronger on the international stage when we are united?

The hon. Gentleman said that this decision was not what was promised in 2014 or at the last election. I hesitate to remind him that that was before the pandemic and the coronavirus, and before we were faced with—[Interruption.] Well, he is quite right to say that there are always domestic pressures and competing priorities in relation to the public finances, but we are not under any normal set of circumstances. We have got the worst economic contraction in over 300 years. We have a deficit double the size that we faced after the last financial crash, and we are having to make very difficult decisions. If he thinks we have made the wrong decision, I would like to hear from the SNP—a rhetorical, not an actual question—what he thinks should be cut in the investments the Chancellor announced yesterday in order to hit 0.7%.

The hon. Gentleman referred—in what I thought was actually pretty unsavoury language—to a crippling raid on ODA. We will spend £10 billion next year. His inbox may be different from mine, but I think our constituents will understand, because they live in the real world, that we have to make difficult decisions. This is still an extraordinary contribution that the taxpayers of this country will make to alleviate suffering and poverty around the world.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

May I suggest that we squint at the nettles in what was said yesterday and what has been said today? Clearly, it would be illuminating to see the messages that the Foreign Secretary will have sent to the Treasury and the Prime Minister arguing against the cut. We know that this is not his idea.

May I ask the Foreign Secretary how much the amount of money would have gone down if we had kept 0.7% with an 11% contraction of the economy? Is that well over £1 billion? How much extra is being taken by coming down from 0.7%? Is the proposed legislation designed to make sure we come back to 0.7% or to make it possible to avoid coming back to it for a long time?

I end by saying that I first stood for election when the Foreign Secretary was born, and I became a trustee of Christian Aid to fight to get the Government to meet the commitment they had made a long time before to 0.7%. I rejoiced when we met it. It was not put on us by the Liberal Democrats; it was in our manifesto in 2010. I am glad that the Foreign Secretary was able to say in July that we would stick to 0.7%.

[Dominic Raab]

I thank my hon. Friend. He will be able to work out that the difference is £4 billion in savings next year. Of course we looked at whether we could just follow the contraction in GNI to deliver the savings that we need. We looked at every single option, but the challenge we have is that the pandemic is uncertain. That is what we found in the throes of coming out of the second national lockdown. As a result, the impact on the economy and the public finances is not just profound but also uncertain.

My hon. Friend asked some further questions about our seriousness in getting back to 0.7%. We are serious. He is right to say that it was a manifesto commitment that we were proud of, but I think that the country expects us to stand up and make difficult decisions, given the necessity of the situation that we face. We have made it clear that it is temporary, and we will get back to it just as soon as the public finances allow.