UK-EU: International Development

Preet Kaur Gill Excerpts

Wednesday 21st March 2018 Westminster Hall

[Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (Dr Williams) on securing this important debate. He spoke passionately and persuasively about what is at stake in our future relationship with the EU, and why we must get it right. We have heard a number of particularly useful contributions and points, which have been made forcefully. It is testament to how important this topic is that we would all benefit from additional time.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq) and the right hon. Member for Belfast North (Nigel Dodds) for their contributions. I also thank the hon. Member for Gordon (Colin Clark), who talked about the importance of working with EU partners, my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle), who reminded us that we should not disadvantage non-governmental organisations based in London when leaving the EU, given the work that they do, and the hon. Member for Dundee West (Chris Law), who talked about the importance of our relationship with the EU, and the impact on our global capacity to respond to natural disasters if funding streams are not available to the sector.

We have heard today how important it is for the Government to lay out a clear and unambiguous position on what we want from a future relationship with the EU. That simply has not happened yet. We have a Government position paper from September, but it is remarkable only for its ambiguity. As of the end of February, we now also have the so-called “non-paper” that sets out the UK perspective on development instruments for the 2021-27 general EU budget. It provides a little more detail, but it runs the risk of the Government again wanting to cherry-pick, have our cake and eat it, and demand more “creative thinking” from the EU to solve the Government’s lack of imagination and focus.

We have heard today that our humanitarian and development partnership with the EU is too important, and has too great an impact on the lives of the world’s poorest people, to warrant dragging our feet, or sliding into a snail’s pace of negotiation. I believe that the House has heard loudly and clearly that decisions over future funding contributions to the EU must be guided not by short-term political horse-trading, but by their impact on the lives of the world’s poorest.

We must not allow the lives that are at stake to become simply a bargaining chip. We have heard today from Members that, although not perfect, EU development and humanitarian programmes are well proven as an effective, value-for-money, delivery channel for the UK. They have scored very highly in our own multilateral aid review, and they allow us to pool resources and expertise, to co-ordinate better on the ground, to reach a greater number of countries, to take to scale what we do, and to influence how more than €75 billion worth of aid funding is spent. That translates into real lives saved, real girls put in school, and real crises averted.

There is a groundswell of support for the UK remaining progressive, outward-looking, generous and a global leader on international development once we leave the European Union. We must not turn inwards. We must not abandon our partnership with Europe, even as we leave the European Union. I hope that the Minister will not give credence to those who disingenuously say they want to take back control of the aid budget from Brussels, only to stop spending it on helping the world’s poorest.

The Government now need to make up for lost time, set out an ambitious, bold, clear vision, and get on with it. There are just weeks and months to do that, and the clock is ticking. As we do that, it cannot just be the Government talking to themselves. We need to hear the voices of civil society, and of people in the global south who will be affected. We need to hear the voices of the organisations that know the EU’s development and humanitarian programmes best, and that understand the impact that decisions will have. We need to hear the voices of the thousands of international development workers whose jobs in the UK are at risk.

We also need to hear the voice of Parliament, and ensure that there is proper space and time given for Members to scrutinise the Government’s vision, debate it, and shape it. That must be much more than one Westminster Hall debate, which we are having thanks only to my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South, who forced it. I hope that the Minister will commit to significantly expanding the space for future debate on this topic in the coming weeks, because so far it has been woefully insufficient.

Our future relationship with the EU is simply too important to fail, and we need to get on with ensuring that it does not. I thank all hon. Members for their excellent contributions, and look forward to the Minister’s remarks.