International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill

Philip Davies Excerpts

Friday 12th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

My right hon. Friend is extremely generous.

In return for this extraordinarily favourable arrangement for British development policy, we have to honour the electorate by ensuring that we demonstrate that we really do secure the results that we promise—that for every pound of their hard-earned money, we really do secure 100p of development on the ground. That is why this Government have conducted multilateral and bilateral aid reviews, to ensure that we can demonstrate to the public that this money is really well spent.

[Philip Davies]

My right hon. Friend keeps talking about how we should spend our money, but he might have noticed that we have not got any money. What he is actually asking us to do is borrow billions of pounds to pass on to other countries. The actual cost to the taxpayer is even more than 0.7% because we have to pay interest—

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[Mrs Caroline Spelman (Meriden) (Con)]

I add my congratulations to the right hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (Michael Moore) on bringing forward this Bill. He and I served in the Cabinet that made the unanimous decision to protect spending not only on overseas aid but on health. I am proud of the fact that, when we came into government in 2010—a very difficult time for this country, when significant savings had to be made in public expenditure—there was a unanimous Cabinet decision to protect expenditure on the world’s poorest people.

I want to draw on that experience to underline the importance of the Bill. The UK is the first ever G8 country to reach the 0.7% target, joining other, smaller countries such as Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Luxembourg and the United Arab Emirates. It is significant that we are providing that leadership among the G8 countries.

I want to help some hon. Members understand the long history behind the figure of 0.7%. I have had one or two conversations this week in which hon. Members seemed to think that the 0.7% figure was plucked out of thin air; some have asked why it should not be 0.8%. Interestingly, the United Kingdom played a significant role in selecting the target. As long ago as 1958, the Churches in the United Kingdom first made the recommendation for the 0.7% target. It took until 1970 for the United Nations General Assembly to embrace the target unanimously. As a former Secretary of State who tried, successfully, to secure two United Nations agreements, which not every Member of this House has the opportunity to do, I would like to explain how difficult it is to get 193 nations to agree to do something unanimously. After all, how diverse is our world? It is significant that this unanimity exists on the development assistance agenda.

So it was that a resolution was passed that each economically advanced country would work towards 0.7% of its gross national income. It might sound like an arbitrary figure, but it is not, and it is agreed to by the United Nations. The target has seen some minor changes since it was first established, but the basic principle and the global commitment to it has remained consistent. As a 2010 OECD article states, it

“has been repeatedly re-endorsed at international conferences on aid and development down to the present day”.

It is also significant that development assistance is seen globally as something really special. There is not, for example, a United Nations agreement on what the target for expenditure on defence should be, and it is difficult to imagine that that could be achieved. There was a recent attempt to secure United Nations agreement on what percentage of GNI should be spent on health, but it has not proved possible to secure a unanimous agreement on that expenditure. I invite hon. Members to consider this: development assistance remains quite exceptional as the subject of a unanimous view of all nations on what we should seek to spend to help the world’s poorest people.

[Philip Davies]

The idea that this is not an arbitrary figure is just a load of old drivel. It started off as 0.7% of GDP and now it is 0.7% of GNI, which is completely different. In fact, the definition of GNI is going to be revised in autumn 2014, which will produce a completely new calculation altogether. Which does my right hon. Friend think it should be—current GNI, future GNI, or the original GDP?

[Mrs Spelman]

I do not believe that the figure is arbitrary. I am not a qualified statistician, but I know that gross national income is an accepted, more accurate measure of how much money a country has coming in. That is internationally accepted as well.

As we have seen, the UK is leading the way by reaching this target. That is a cause to be celebrated, which this Bill does in practical terms by enshrining it in statute. Although we have already reached the target this year, there remain strong arguments for enshrining these principles in law. First, the Bill recognises the significance of the achievements that have been made while simultaneously protecting the principles that underpin it.

Secondly, having the target in law limits the scope for political wrangling over the aid budget in future. That has a number of benefits. As Concern Worldwide has said,

“we won’t have to waste time quibbling over precisely how much to spend any more, and can instead focus on what’s really important: doing the most good with the money.”

Making a similar argument, the coalition of campaigners in the Turn Up Save Lives campaign, which focuses specifically on this Bill, has noted that

“putting our promises to the poorest beyond the day to day debates of party politics means policy-makers can focus on how we continue to improve the quality of aid, instead of having an annual debate on whether or not we intend to stick to our commitments.”

Opponents of aid targets in general sometimes argue that they are problematic because they encourage a focus on the level of aid rather than its effectiveness. That is a very important point, but focusing on the effectiveness of aid rather than its level is precisely what this Bill seeks to enable future Governments to be free to do. With the level of aid safeguarded in law, future Governments would be in a position to focus on getting value for money and using the aid in the most effective way possible. A further benefit of an aid target is that it gives a degree of predictability to the recipient countries. That enables them to plan more effectively for the long term, which, in turn, is likely to increase the effectiveness of any assistance. It encourages aid recipients to plan ahead far more effectively, which has led the poverty charity Results to comment:

“Having 0.7% fixed in legislation…means increasing the predictability of UK aid…bringing forward the day when those countries will become self-reliant”,

which is what we all want to see. The benefit is not restrictive, meaning that the aid budget is still responsive to our domestic fortunes. That is a really important point. The aid budget would be fixed at a percentage, but not at an absolute amount, allowing for adjustments in accordance with how the British economy is doing.

As the hon. Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) asserted, there is significant public support for this Bill and that must be taken into account.

[Philip Davies]

They need to get out more.

[Mrs Spelman]

I hear a challenge from beside me about where that is substantiated. For the record, according to the 2012 ComRes survey, 61% of adults supported the increases in overseas development assistance spending that enabled the Government to meet their 0.7%. Indeed, a third of those thought that 0.7% was too low. It is clear that the Bill has widespread support among the public and the third sector. The Turn Up Save Lives campaign is backed by 40 groups, including Oxfam, UNICEF, Tearfund, Christian Aid and Islamic Relief, to name but a few. I join the former Secretary of State for International Development, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), in applauding the work of those aid agencies working in some of the most difficult circumstances, particularly where their own lives are threatened, as we have seen this summer with hostage taking in centres of conflict.

Some would ask: why should we give aid at all? Some Members will undoubtedly question giving 0.7% of our GNI, but DFID’s budget for this financial year is about £13 billion, which equates to about 1.6p in every pound in the United Kingdom. According to Tearfund, of which I remind the House I am a vice-president, that figure is also less than the amount we spend on takeaway food in this country every year. It sometimes helps to bring percentages of GNI down to an incredibly practical level, so next time hon. Members order a takeaway, I ask them please to remember that our average spend on takeaways is more than we spend on overseas aid.

There is also an absolute moral argument that I do not think we can get away from. Given the recovery of our economy, there is some dispute about whether we are the world’s seventh richest nation or whether we are rising up to be the sixth richest nation. Sixth or seventh, we are among the richest nations in the world and I believe that means there is an absolute moral requirement on us to help the world’s poorest. As the Archbishop of Canterbury has said, critics of aid all too frequently

“ignore the transformative impact that aid can and does have in fragile countries struggling to meet basic human needs”.

The Turn Up Save Lives campaign points to the recent example of the civil war in Syria, where the combination of Government aid and contributions from the British public have enabled more than 1 million children to be reached with blankets and other supplies. Such figures provide a mere insight into some of the ways in which aid is having a transformative effect on people’s lives.

On a visit to Bangladesh earlier this year, I saw flood resilience that had been built through the capacity building of an aid agency, which gave me the idea that some of our own flood-affected communities at home could have done with such simple capacity building. I shall never forget visiting the huts of women in rural Bangladesh who were not able to read or write, but who, as a result of capacity building, had been taught how to generate an income for their village. As a result, they had built latrines in the village and had enough money to put solar panels on the roofs of the huts to provide internal lighting. As those women told me, with a real sense of empowerment in their eyes, “Maybe we can’t read and write, but some of our daughters are now able to go to university because they are able to study, even in the hours of darkness.”

If anybody in the House is still in doubt about the transformative nature of development assistance and about the way in which it creates not dependency but sustainability, I for one would be somewhat surprised. In the words of the former managing director of the World Bank, the current Finance Minister of Nigeria:

“Aid can be a facilitator. That is all aid can be. Aid cannot solve our problems. I’m firmly convinced about that. But it can be catalytic.”

I agree that the Bill will be a catalyst.

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[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

If I may, I would like to start by paying my tribute to Ian Paisley. It was a great privilege that when I made my maiden speech in Parliament, it came after a speech by the great man himself. I have always thought that that was a great honour. I was also very honoured to be invited to Speaker’s House for his 80th birthday celebration. I will always be grateful to him for inviting me. One of my favourite moments was going to his church in Ulster to listen to him giving a sermon. The verve with which he gave a sermon was even greater than that with which he made speeches in this House, if that is possible. I am extremely sorry to hear the news. In the short time that we were both in Parliament, he became a very good friend, along with many of his party colleagues. I send my sympathies to people in Northern Ireland and, in particular, to the current hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) and his family. When we say that people will be very deeply missed, it is sometimes an exaggeration, but it certainly is not when we talk about Ian Paisley. As far as I am concerned, he was one of the finest parliamentarians this House has ever seen.

To return to the Bill—thank you for indulging me, Madam Deputy Speaker—this debate has been going for roughly three hours and there has been what might be called one-way traffic, with speeches on the merits of the Bill and the merits of aid more generally. It is only right, given that we are supposed to debate things in this House, that we spend some time listening to the other side of the argument. I hope that those who claim to believe in Parliament and parliamentary debate will not rush to vote for a closure motion to stop the other side of the argument being heard. That would rather demean them and their view of democracy and debate. I just say that in passing.

The Bill raises a number of questions. Does aid actually work? That is a legitimate area for debate. Should we spend 0.7% of gross national income on aid? That is another area of debate. Finally, should that spending be put into law? This Bill is gesture politics of the worst kind. Everybody here is saying why it is so important to spend 0.7% of GNI on aid, although they do not seem to care which definition of GNI is used. We are spending 0.7% of GNI on overseas aid. In fact, we are spending 0.72% of GNI on it. We therefore do not need to put it into law. Even the people who are saying that it is such a wonderful thing must recognise, by the fact that it is already happening, that we do not need a law in order to do it. If Parliament wants to do it, it can quite easily do so, as we have proved in this Parliament.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern about the constitutional propriety of trying to bind our successors?

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[Philip Davies]

I agree with my hon. Friend, and that is in effect what the Bill is trying to do.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

rose—

[Philip Davies]

I am not going to give way. We have heard so much from people in favour of the Bill, and now we are going to hear from people who have a more sensible opinion. The hon. Gentleman can keep raising his hand, but I am not going to give way.

[Martin Horwood]

I am trying to tell you why we are binding the hands of our successors.

[Philip Davies]

We heard that in an intervention from one of the hon. Gentleman’s colleagues, who said that his whole intention in supporting the Bill was to ensure that future Parliaments did not change the law. The cat has already been let out of the bag.

It was rather galling to see the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) lecture the House on how we should not be breaking our promises. The man who promised a referendum on the Lisbon treaty and who shamefully and shamelessly avoided that promise has absolutely no right to come here and lecture the rest of us. [Interruption.] As my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) says from a sedentary position, the right hon. Gentleman promised us that he had ended boom and bust. He made that solemn promise on many occasions to the House.

[Mr Tom Clarke]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is the custom of this House when a Member intends to mention another Member that they give notice. May I ask you, Madam Deputy Speaker, whether the hon. Gentleman has given such notice to my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown)?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that point of order. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman who currently has the Floor, Mr Philip Davies, will make it clear that he has.

[Philip Davies]

What I will make clear is that unlike the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, who started the debate and then cleared off, I have been sitting here for the whole debate, so I am not sure how on earth you, Madam Deputy Speaker, or the right hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr Clarke), would expect me to have given him notice.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker, I understand that the purpose of that rule is to deal with a premeditated intention to embarrass a Member, not if the point under consideration is something that has arisen in the course of the debate.

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[Philip Davies]

I assure you, Madam Deputy Speaker, that I am apologising for nothing.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. If I suggest that it might be in order for the hon. Gentleman to apologise, that is to keep good order in this place and to observe courtesies between Members. There should never be a situation where Members feel that a discourtesy has been made. I am certain that the hon. Gentleman meant no discourtesy, and I am sure he will say so.

[Philip Davies]

I confirm that I certainly meant no discourtesy, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I stand by everything I said. I think I agreed with about 0.7% of what the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath said in his speech.

At some point, when you allow, Madam Deputy Speaker, Members on the Government Benches will no doubt be invited to support the closure of this debate. I want them to know exactly what they will be doing. Ultimately, they will be answerable to voters in their constituencies in the not-too-distant future. By allowing this Bill to go into Committee and to make progress, Members are basically signalling the death knell of the EU (Referendum) Bill promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill). At some point, all my hon. Friends will have to explain to their electorate, and to other candidates in that election, why they feel that this Bill is more important than that Bill. I do not believe it is, particularly given that the spending on aid is being achieved at the moment anyway. They will have to explain that, and I hope they feel relaxed about doing so. Many of my hon. Friends present—virtually all of them—are in safe seats, which seems to me probably no coincidence. However, I hope they will explain their actions to colleagues in less favourable circumstances, and I hope they know that that is what they will be doing when they go into the Lobby later today.

I am not surprised that the Liberal Democrats or the Labour party support the Bill. They are perfectly entitled to do so as it matches their philosophy. In a socialist philosophy, which Labour and the Liberal Democrats share, what is important is not outputs, but inputs.

[Pamela Nash (Airdrie and Shotts) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Philip Davies]

I will not give way. We have heard so much drivel from people with a different opinion from me. I am trying to get some balance into the debate.

When Labour Members argue that we should be judged only on how much money we spend, it does not come as a great surprise, because that is what Labour and Liberal Democrat politicians have always argued for. I remember in the last Parliament asking why truancy under the then Labour Government was so terrible, and the Minister’s answer was: “We’ve spent £1 billion extra tackling truancy”, as if that was fine. Truancy had got worse, but that did not matter because they had spent £1 billion extra on tackling it. It struck me then as even more criminal than ever. They had spent £1 billion and truancy had still got worse. If they had said, “We’ve saved a bit of money and it’s got a bit worse”, that might have been some justification, but for it to get worse and to proudly boast, “That’s all right because we spent £1 billion extra”, is complete nonsense. So of course Labour and the Liberal Democrats believe in the Bill.

What I cannot understand in my heart is how any self-respecting person who wants to call themselves a Conservative can possibly subscribe to the view that we should be judged simply on a piece of legislation that sets out only how much we are to spend, and that it is irrelevant what we do with the money or whether we can afford it. Those should be the things a Conservative thinks about, but many of my colleagues seem to want to abandon their Conservative principles. I should perhaps be reassured that had the Government taken my view, most of my hon. Friends would be arguing the opposite of what they have been arguing today. They might be supporting this policy not through sincere belief but because of their desire for advancement. I do not know whether they believe in the Bill. In many respects, I hope they support it because they think it will help their advancement, because if they genuinely believe in it, I do not see how they can call themselves Conservatives in any shape or form.

There seems to be a view—a politically correct attack to close down debate—that runs simply: either a person is for international aid and therefore in favour of the Bill, or they are against international aid and therefore oppose the Bill. It is an all-or-nothing argument. If someone criticises Britain’s huge, often mismanaged aid budget, they are accused of not wanting to help the neediest in the world. It is designed to cover up mistakes in the overseas aid budget and ignore shortfalls. This politically correct campaign has allowed international aid to linger as such an inefficient part of Government spending, without sufficient checks or proper rigour.

I believe that humanitarian aid is very important. It provides relief for people who suffer from acute distress following conflict, famine, natural disasters and other emergencies. That work is vital. This country has always stepped up to its responsibilities, and I have no doubt it will always do so, when it sees images around the world of tragedies taking place. However, I am sceptical about the aid that dominates more than nine tenths of official aid spending—development aid. It is the predominance of this aid spending that we are mainly focusing on here. This aid offers continuous support to recipient countries in the areas of education, health, water and sanitation, government and civil society, economic infrastructure, economic production, debt relief and other things across many different Departments.

We have to consider the country’s financial position. Thanks to considerable overspends over many years by the Labour party, we have a huge debt mountain, and scandalously our debt payments are still as big as the budget of one of the biggest Departments. I hope that the right hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill will allow me to say that, because of the disastrous way in which the former Chancellor and previous Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, ran this country, it seems that he was determined to make us a recipient of international aid rather than a contributor to it.

At a time of national austerity, it seems to me sensible that we would want to reduce the aid spending given to other countries. It would not have been a bad thing even to have frozen aid spending to other countries, but to increase it massively, as we have done, at the same time as we are making the case that we have no money and have to cut spending everywhere and cut our cloth accordingly, is completely and utterly ridiculous.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

Would our constituents be right in asking this pertinent question: why is it appropriate for the Government to seek to hypothecate into the future for future Parliaments on this area of expenditure when in every other domestic area, including important areas such as literacy, social care and cancer, they set their face against such hypothecation? Is that not a reasonable question?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I personally think that if my constituents were asked for what area it was more important to guarantee a certain level of expenditure—the NHS or overseas aid; the defence budget or overseas aid; the police budget or overseas aid; the education budget or overseas aid?—the overseas aid budget would come off second best in any head-to-head contest. Lord only knows why on earth people in this place think that the public believe uniquely that this particular Government Department should have its funding increased massively and then protected at that level. To be perfectly honest, I think they all need to get out more.

[Pamela Nash]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Philip Davies]

I am not giving way to the hon. Lady.

We are not even spending taxpayers’ money. We keep on talking about how important it is to spend taxpayers’ money wisely, but we are not spending that money. We do not have any money. When will people understand that even now we are borrowing? Even after the Chancellor’s welcome measures, we are still borrowing £100 billion a year. We are not in a position to spend 0.7% of our GNI on overseas aid, because it is actually much more than that. What we are doing is borrowing money from other countries, paying interest on it to then hand it over to other countries. At the start of this Parliament, we were in the ludicrous situation of borrowing huge sums of money from China in order to give China overseas aid to help that country to get along. It could hardly be made up. No wonder most of my constituents think that the people here are round the bend.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

We are, in effect, spending the money of taxpayers as yet unborn.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right.

Are we going to take into account the debt interest that we will have to incur on the money we are spending on overseas aid? Is that going to be taken into account as part of the 0.7%, or is that on top of the 0.7% that we are actually handing over? As I made clear in my intervention on my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman), the idea that we even know what we are spending is a complete nonsense as well, because the goalposts are always moving. It was first supposed to be 0.7% of GDP; now we are told it is 0.7% of GNI; and in the autumn of this year, apparently, how GNI is calculated is going to be changed, which will mean an upward revision to GNI, making our aid as a proportion of GNI lower so that we will have to spend even more on overseas aid to hit our 0.7% target.

[Pamela Nash]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Philip Davies]

No, I will not.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden provided some of the history. I recommend the 6th report of the Lords Select Committee on Economic Affairs for the Session 2010 to 2012, which was a marvellous report on the effectiveness of overseas aid. This all dates back to the UN General Assembly of 1970. The idea that this target is somehow well thought through and relevant to today’s needs and environment is complete and utter nonsense. The target was first plucked out of the air 44 years ago. The idea that it is likely to be the right one to use now is for the birds. It is completely nonsensical to think that the right target in 1970 automatically must be the right target in 2014, when the world is so different.

[Mr Nuttall]

Will my hon. Friend confirm that when that motion was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly, the aim was for countries to exert their best efforts to achieve the 0.7% target by the middle of the 1970s, not by the middle of the 2010s?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The original target is completely out of date. Indeed, I note in passing that if this matter is so important for the Labour party and vital for the future of the world, it is interesting that the attendance on their Benches is a bit thin. I think I have seen about 20 Labour Members come in the Chamber to support the measure. Perhaps they might want to explain why that is.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Is not the most important point that if we fix a Department’s budget as a proportion of the nation’s income, we grossly distort the actions of that Department? Departments should spend what they can afford on what they want to do within the limits of what is in the national interest. This measure would be grossly distorting and un-Conservative.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Let us just imagine what would happen if the Government intended to support a particular project somewhere, but found towards the end of the financial year that it was rife with corruption and therefore thought it best not to spend money on it. They would not be able to do that. The Government would not be allowed to say, “We’ll keep the money and not spend it,” but would be forced, at the last minute, to spend it, because Parliament had insisted that it had to be spent, come what may. How on earth is that a sensible way to ask a Department to act?

We heard the idea that if we did this and set the lead, all other countries would follow. We hear it time and again in different contexts. CND started this in the 1980s—“If we get rid of all our nuclear weapons, every other country in the world will follow.” We all knew—even the Labour party came to realise—that that was a load of old nonsense. Then we started hearing it on climate change—“If we hit our climate change targets and do all this, every other country in the world will follow”—but that has been proved to be a load of cobblers as well. All the big people churning out all the carbon emissions are doing absolutely nothing to curb them, apart from welcoming our industry to their countries, but still we hear it, even though it has been proved wrong time after time—“If we do this, every other country will follow.”

What has actually happened in practice? While we have been ramping up the proportion that we spend on overseas aid, similar countries in the developed world have been reducing the amount they spend as a percentage of their GNI. Why have they done that? There are two possible explanations. The first is that they actually have some sense and realise that if they cannot afford to spend the money, they would have to spend less on something that is a discretionary spend—something that we might consider doing at some point.

[Alison McGovern]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Philip Davies]

I will not.

Those countries have probably also thought, “Well, this is marvellous. We don’t need to worry about spending a bit less, because the United Kingdom is taking the strain. They can do all the heavy lifting. They’re spending so much more, so we can reduce our spending.”

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech—[Interruption]—in which I can see hon. and right hon. Members are most interested. As the Select Committee on International Development has pointed out, because there were not the projects in which the British taxpayer could invest, one of the consequences of ramping up overseas aid by £4 billion over four years was that much of the money went to international aid agencies, which then administered it on behalf of the British taxpayer. However, as the Committee found, they were not as rigorous in ensuring value for money as our Department was.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right.

[Stephen Doughty]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I wonder whether you could provide some guidance. Is it not the practice and the courtesy of the House for Members to give way to Front Benchers who wish to intervene? The hon. Gentleman does not seem to want to let anybody on the Opposition Benches intervene and there is a Front Bencher indicating—[Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I do not need to be told whether it is a point of order, thank you very much. The hon. Gentleman is making a reasonable point, but I will answer him by saying that it is up to the person who has the floor whether he wishes to take an intervention and from where. It is up to each Member to decide the extent to which they wish to engage in debate.

[Philip Davies]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. As I said at the start, we have had three hours of speeches from Members in favour of this Bill and I think the public and this House deserve to hear the viewpoint of people who do not support it. They have had plenty of time to make their case; it was just a pretty poor one.

[Alison McGovern]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

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[Philip Davies]

No, I will not.

The other point I want to make is that we ought to bear in mind the money that is spent versus gifts in kind. We as a country should be encouraging people to give money privately. Private money that is spent, where people raise money for particular causes, should be taken off the amount that is spent by the Government. There are lots of people who raise money for very good causes around the world.

[Stephen Doughty]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Philip Davies]

No, I will not.

I can mention two organisations in my constituency in that regard: Mpika Relief Fund does a fantastic amount of work helping people in Africa, and there is one in Burley-in-Wharfedale that does a similar job. They raise money for very worthwhile causes. I very much support what they do; I have even made donations to them in the past. What they spend their money on is much more worthwhile than these grandiose schemes that the Government come up with, where Ministers like to go out and say how wonderful they are because they are indulging their largesse everywhere. I prefer the smaller schemes that are run bottom-up from organisations like the ones in my constituency.

It might even be a good idea for the Government to offer tax relief for people who want to go out to other countries to help with particular projects. I would welcome that.

[Jeremy Lefroy]

It might help my hon. Friend to know that, actually, the gift aid from those kinds of donations is included within the 0.7% we are talking about, so that is happening at the moment.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is missing my point. I am not talking about gift aid on donations. I am talking about tax relief to help assist people who want to go out and do something practical themselves—who want to give up their job for a while to do something worthwhile. That would be a much more valuable and worthwhile thing for the Government to do than simply flex their muscles on how much they spend.

Because I am feeling in a generous mood, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will give way to the hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern), seeing as she is so excitable about intervening.

[Alison McGovern]

That must be one of the more curious attempts I have made to intervene on the hon. Gentleman. I cannot quite work out why he has allowed me to intervene now, but as he has, perhaps I might ask him, first, if he will congratulate the last Labour Government on their actions on gift aid and recognise the impact it has had, as has been pointed out. Also, is his argument really that there is no place at all for leadership on this issue from the UK Government, never mind what other countries do? Is it correct that he believes we have no moral leadership role at all?

[Philip Davies]

Clearly the hon. Lady has not listened to a word I said. At the very start I said that I support the Government’s humanitarian aid, and I am in favour of tax relief—I am always in favour of anything that reduces the burden of taxation on people.

[Stephen Doughty]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Philip Davies]

No, I am not giving way again. The last intervention was so poor that I do not think it justifies another one.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden mentioned opinion polls and public support for these things. A YouGov-Cambridge poll in 2011 made clear the public’s opinion. The following question was asked:

“Along with spending on the NHS, the international aid budget is the only area of government spending that is not facing cuts. The government has promised to increase this budget by one third to 0.7% of Gross National Income (GNI) in line with international agreements signed previously. Generally speaking, how favourable or unfavourable are you towards this policy?”

Some 56% of those asked were unfavourable, and only 9% considered themselves to be very favourable to it.

When asked if they would support or oppose a freeze on spending on international development—at the level as it was then in 2011—69% of people said they supported a freeze. Also, 69% of respondents said international aid fails to reach ordinary people in the developing world and is wasted by corrupt Governments; 49% believed international aid enhances the power of bad Governments in developing countries; and 55% thought it discourages Governments in developing countries from spending money on their own people.

Those statistics mirror the feedback that I get from my constituents when we talk about spending on overseas aid. They understand the fact that this country has no money, that we are borrowing and spending way beyond our means and that we have to tighten our belts. They therefore find it extraordinary that we are spending about £4 billion a year more on overseas aid than we were in 2010. That is completely nonsensical and unjustifiable.

The Bill proves that overseas aid does not work. I remember going to see my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) to discuss these issues a few years ago. I told him that I would have more sympathy for overseas aid if he adopted a policy in which we considered the situation in every country individually and decided how we could help it to better itself by establishing a programme that would last for a certain number of years, after which we would expect it to have sorted out its governance and corruption. After that point, our assistance would eventually tail off and the country would stand on its own two feet and head off into the future.

If that were the Government’s policy on overseas aid, I would have some sympathy for it. I would want to scrutinise it, of course, but it seems pretty reasonable. However, the Bill does not propose that we do that; it proposes the exact opposite. It says that we are going to spend the same amount of money every single year in perpetuity. That is basically an acceptance that our assistance will fail, that it will not turn around a country’s fortunes or deal with the causes of poverty, and that it will just be a hand-out to make a few middle-class, Guardian-reading, sandal-wearing, lentil-eating do-gooders with a misguided guilt complex feel better about themselves. It will do nothing to alleviate the real causes of poverty in those countries.

We know that the current system does not work. We have been pouring tens of billions of pounds a year into Africa, year in, year out. How much further forward is Africa today, compared with when we started pouring in those tens of billions of pounds? It is barely any further forward at all—

[Pamela Nash]

Rubbish!

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. The hon. Lady will not shout across the Chamber, no matter how much noise the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) is making.

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I always feel that I must be doing something right if I manage to wind up Opposition Members who hold idiotic views. It will be time for people on my side to worry when the Opposition start to agree with what they are saying. That should tell them that they are on the wrong side of the argument.

We know that the present policy is not working because the countries in question have not developed as much as they should have done. The question that I would pose to everyone is this: what do they think are the root causes of poverty in some of those countries in Africa? Is it that those countries are not getting enough aid? Does anybody really think that that would get to the root cause of the problem? Or is it perhaps that those countries have terrible governance and that the rule of law means nothing there? Could it be that outside companies will not invest in those countries, even though such investment would create wealth and prosperity, because they could have all their assets confiscated within a few weeks or months? We need to sort out all those factors if we want to sort out the problems in Africa, rather than simply handing over an ever-larger cheque every year and thinking that that will sort out all the problems of the developing world. It is idiotic and simplistic to think that that will work. Let us deal with the root causes and tell those countries that they need to get themselves sorted out—

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Philip Davies]

I will not give way.

The reason that people want to invest in this country is that the rule of law is important to us. That is what we need to export to those other countries. We do not need to export cheques; that really does not work.

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

As someone who rarely wears sandals and never reads The Guardian, but who nevertheless believes it possible to multi-task, may I suggest that it is possible to feed people, educate people and deal with governance problems all at the same time? They are not sequential.

[Philip Davies]

Well, it appears to have been beyond us. While we have been handing over all these cheques, in an increasing amount, year in, year out, those governance issues are still there. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman can explain how well the £138 million or thereabouts—I am quoting from memory, so I may not be exactly right about the figure—that went to Zimbabwe last year is going in terms of governance? It does not seem to me to be hitting the mark in improving the future of that country.

[Margot James]

If I had had time to make a speech—I now will not—I would have pointed out that I observed many examples in Africa in the 10 years I was involved in development before I came to this place where the money spent by this country and other donor countries has made a remarkable difference. Such examples can be found in Uganda, Nigeria and Botswana—there are many of these places. May I conclude my intervention by saying that some of these countries are so vulnerable, having had to deal with the Ebola virus, terrorism and so on, and they do not have the infrastructure that we are so lucky to have in the west? Could my hon. Friend not give some consideration to those points in his speech?

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her intervention. I do not doubt that she is taken to all the successful programmes there have been, but I wonder whether she was taken to the following one. I wonder whether she was taken to Kenya. Forget about poverty and all this kind of thing, because apparently the most important priority in Kenya is graffiti. We gave to a £6.7 million aid project called Making All Voices Count, which pays for political graffiti in Nairobi. The spray murals are said to be useful as they

“engage with artists to spread data-based information in slums in order to empower citizens to make data-driven arguments”.

They are, apparently, also justified because they target police corruption through awareness. You couldn’t make it up: we are literally spraying money away. With £16.5 million of aid allegedly being stolen by Kenyan Ministers and officials in the past few years, it is nonsensical to suggest that all of this aid budget is going round doing all this good. A load of old nonsense is going on.

Let me talk about a project in Ethiopia. It is not about creating life opportunities through work or educating people. It empowers women through music, and we gave money to the so-called “Ethiopian Spice Girls”, a five-strong girl group called Yegna. That may bring a smile to people’s faces, until we realise that this is part of a bigger programme called the Girl Hub, to which DFID handed over £3.8 million. As a justification for that excessive expenditure the point was made that Ethiopian girls

“faced challenges such as forced marriage, violence, teen pregnancy, and dropping out of school”.

Of course they do—we all agree with that—but I think I must be out of touch because I thought the best way of tackling those things was to target those issues; I did not realise that the way to tackle them was to finance a girl group to sing about those problems. You could not make this up, but it is true.

It all goes to show that DFID has so much money that it does not know what to do with it, so it is scratting around for any kind of nonsensical, politically correct project to throw its money away on. But it is not throwing away its own money—this is our money. It is our constituents’ money that DFID is throwing away with gay abandon. It might make DFID feel good, but it does not do a great deal for my constituents who are seeing their money go up in smoke. What I want to know is who in DFID actually sits around a table and says, “I know, I think we should fund the ‘Ethiopian Spice Girls’. I think that is a good use of public money.” We can just imagine the discussion in the Department, where everyone around the table says, “I think that is a marvellous idea.” Does nobody in these Departments say, “Do you not think that’s a crass way to spend taxpayers’ money?” Is nobody there speaking up for taxpayers? I do not believe anybody is. This is just being done to satisfy the egos of politicians; it is not about doing anything to alleviate poverty.

[Mr Gray]

I have been listening carefully to my hon. Friend’s speech. I am concerned that he is conflating those who are opposed to the Bill, as I am, because they think it is bad from a constitutional standpoint with the people who are genuinely opposed to aid. I am strongly in favour of the 0.7% target, but I just do not believe the Bill is the right way to achieve it. I am concerned that he is mixing up being opposed to aid in general with being opposed to the Bill.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend has a perfectly legitimate point of view, and I agree with much of it. As he has rightly identified, someone can support 0.7% of the budget going in overseas aid without supporting this Bill, because it already happens. We are supposed to pass laws here because we actually need a law to help something or prevent something that is very bad. He has rightly identified that the Bill is a solution looking for a problem, but I do not agree with him that we should be spending 0.7% of our budget on it. [Hon. Members: “Ah!”] I do not agree with that. I would like to think that I have made that abundantly clear. We cannot afford to spend that. There is no evidence that it is being well spent, so I agree with him.

This Government have made such an effort to stop welfare dependency at home, and I support everything that the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has done to try to stop a culture of welfare dependency in this country. People cannot expect to sit and wait for their next handout from the state. How on earth can a Government who have done so much on welfare dependency—[Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman is speaking and is in order. I appreciate that he has a great deal to say and that there is a vibrant argument going on, but I point out to him that he has now spoken for 40 minutes, which is twice as long as anyone else in this debate. He has the Floor and has every right to go on speaking, but one must balance rights with responsibilities. He might like to consider courtesy and consideration for his fellow Members who also wish to speak, and have valid points to make this afternoon.

[Philip Davies]

I am, as always, grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for your guidance. As I said at the start, we have had three hours of speeches from Members who are in favour of this Bill. As you have rightly said, I have spoken for 40 minutes in opposition. But I am a generous man, and I always seek to please you in particular. If it will please you, I will seek to draw my remarks to a close, but if you could indulge me for a couple more—[Interruption.] I could speak for a couple more hours. There is so much wrong with this Bill, we could go on for most of the day and most of the night as well.

I just want to make this point about welfare dependency. We have been doing so much to say to people here, “You cannot expect to sit back and wait for money to come to you without doing anything yourself.” In the same breath, DFID is entrenching welfare dependency abroad. Basically, it is saying to countries, “It doesn’t matter what you do with your governance or what you spend your money on; we will keep handing over the cheques come what may.”

Let us take India as an example. Why on earth are we still giving aid to India?

[Alison McGovern]

rose—

[Philip Davies]

I will not give way; I am drawing my remarks to a close. India spends $35 billion a year on defence. It is spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year on a space programme. It is even developing its own overseas aid programme, yet we are still giving £200 million to it in overseas aid. It is grotesque. I could go on and on about the waste of money that we see in DFID and the fact that it is unjustifiable to keep spending so much money. But I will take your guidance, Madam Deputy Speaker, and draw my remarks to a close.

I just want to remind Members that as Conservatives we should be judging ourselves not on how much we spend, but on how effectively we spend the money and, crucially, on whether or not we can afford to spend the money that we are handing over. We cannot afford to spend all of this money at this moment in time, but that may well change.

I reiterate the point that I made at the beginning—that anybody here today who votes for a closure motion and for this Bill to go into Committee is basically saying that this Bill is more important to them than an EU referendum Bill. They will have to answer to their constituents on that point. I will be able to look my constituents in the eye and say that I did what I thought was right. This Bill is unnecessary. What we need is an EU referendum Bill, which is why I will vote against any closure motion and against this Bill. My colleagues are in danger of falling into the trap set by the Liberal Democrats and the Labour party.

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Neither my hon. Friend the Member for Bury South (Mr Lewis) nor I were able to be present in the House when the sad news of the death of Lord Bannside was announced. Is there a mechanism whereby I and my colleague can express our deepest sympathy and sincere condolence to Baroness Paisley of St George’s and to the present hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) and record our appreciation for a great parliamentarian who moved from initial controversy to become an absolute colossus of modern politics, one of the most important architects of the peace process and a man who will be greatly missed throughout these islands?