Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Rory Stewart and Imran Hussain

Tuesday 23rd April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart]

A lot of lessons have been learned since that initial event, but the right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right; there was a very disturbing event two weeks ago. The basic challenge, as he will be aware, is getting the balance right between ensuring that people are motivated and focused on the regime and that there are high expectations around prisoners and prison officers. To some extent, it is like running a very difficult school, particularly when we are dealing with 16 to 18-year-olds. It is a mixture of being strict on the one hand and loving on the other that is the key to a good prison.

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

Does the Minister agree with his party’s former long-serving Secretary of State, Sir Malcolm Rifkind—a self-confessed true believer in privatisation—who wrote recently in the Financial Times:

“The physical deprivation of a citizen’s liberty should not be the responsibility of a private company or of its employees”?

Does the Minister accept that the renationalisation of HMP Birmingham heralds the end of his Government’s failed prison privatisation agenda?

[Rory Stewart]

I respectfully disagree with Sir Malcolm on this issue. It was absolutely right to take Birmingham back in hand, because that prison was not performing properly. On the other hand, the same company is running some very good prisons in Oakwood, Altcourse and Parc. It is doing good things on family work and on technology. Private sector prisons are often among the safer local prisons in terms of assaults per 1,000. We are not ideological on this. The private sector can certainly play a role.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Rory Stewart and Imran Hussain

Tuesday 12th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart]

In terms of inexperienced prison officers, it is about longer training courses and better mentoring on the wings, with band 4 officers in particular working day in, day out with new staff. In terms of time out of cells, this is why having 4,700 more staff is really important—it allows us to unlock people more and get back to a regime that allows people to get into education and work and protects the public.

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

The point that the Minister conveniently misses is that frontline prison officer resignations have more than tripled since 2010, and now one in three officers has less than two years’ experience, as the Minister fails to get a grip on a retention crisis caused by years of relentless cuts. Does he really think that this exodus of experienced staff will keep prisons safe, as assaults and violence rise to record levels?

[Rory Stewart]

There are two separate things here. The shadow Minister is correct that experienced staff are vital, but it is also worth bearing in mind that one reason why there are so many new staff is that we have recruited 4,700 additional officers; by definition, many of them will be new. Retention is vital. The development of the advanced prison officer grade, which allows experienced closed grade officers to move from band 3 to band 4, will be very important in stabilising prisons.

Joint HMI Prison and Probation Report

Debate between Rory Stewart and Imran Hussain

Thursday 24th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

I have not had advance sight of the statement, but the Minister, in his courteous manner, explained the reason to me shortly before the statement. I am somewhat astonished that, during his 10-minute deliberation, he failed seriously to consider and concede the true, damning nature of the joint report, which has public protection at its heart. We expect our criminal justice system to keep us safe, to keep our children protected, and to ensure the effective management and supervision of offenders, but it is clear from this damning report into the state of the management and supervision of sex offenders that this is not the case.

The report reads like a catalogue of failures in public protection. All five areas inspected had cases that presented safeguarding concerns, most often in relation to children, and around one in three of the intervention plans made paid insufficient attention to keeping children safe. Almost one in five plans failed to address sufficiently the need to keep the public, known adults and staff safe. Overall, inspectors found that there was poor release planning for sex offenders: many cases failed to present a comprehensive risk management plan and many initial offender assessment systems in prisons were missing. That created a situation in which proper restrictions on the access of sex offenders to children could not be applied, putting those children in real danger. Those are severe failings by the Ministry of Justice, and the public have a right to know that they have been put at risk by the Government.

Can the Minister tell me how many sexual offenders released since the beginning of the transforming rehabilitation programme have gone on to reoffend? How many adults and children have been put at risk by the serious failures identified in the report? Of particular note is the threat to the public posed by the inadequate and unsafe resettlement of sexual offenders after release, which he has today acknowledged.

The report identifies two instances, in the small sample, of offenders being released into budget hotels or other temporary accommodation instead of approved premises. The inspectorates have said that it was hard to see a defence for that decision in relation to protecting the public. How many offenders have been released into non- approved premises, how long did they stay in such premises, and what supervision and monitoring arrangements were in place? Does the Minister believe that such a decision was defensible? Following the Government’s privatisation of night-watch staff at approved premises, despite repeated warnings, what assessment has he made of this privatisation of public safety, and does he agree with the unions that that, too, will put the public at risk?

It is also evident that the failings found in the report have been caused and aggravated by the Government’s ill-judged and poorly delivered transforming rehabilitation programme, and their relentless, ideological cuts to the Prison Service. The transforming rehabilitation programme has dangerously and recklessly fragmented the probation system, creating a vastly increased and distressing workload that many staff find difficult to manage, with one in four NPS staff saying that they were not properly prepared for sexual offender work, and supervisors in both prisons and the probation service receiving little or no training. Without sufficient support, we risk losing committed and experienced staff in the probation system, just as we have seen in the prisons system.

What assessment has the Minister made of the transforming rehabilitation agenda on the ability of probation officers to monitor at-risk sexual offenders effectively and protect the public? What assessment has he made of the loss of experienced probation officers and thousands of experienced prison officers, and the impact of these losses on the MOJ’s ability to manage and supervise offenders? Ultimately, does he agree with the probation inspector that

“the public are not sufficiently protected”

from sexual offenders?

[Rory Stewart]

I thank the shadow Minister for his questions, which essentially focused on three separate issues: the transforming rehabilitation programme, reoffending rates, and accommodation. On accommodation, I absolutely share his concerns. He asked for the absolute numbers. As I said, the current numbers suggest that across the country, of the more than 10,000 people being released, 56 are being put in emergency accommodation—so a very small number. The number of those going into hotels would be a fraction of that—something in the region of half a dozen. However, as I said, we are doing all we can to eliminate this entirely. One of the ways in which we are aiming to do so is by building over 200 additional places in approved premises, of which half will be delivered next year.

The hon. Gentleman’s second question was on reoffending rates for sex offenders. Any reoffending by any offender is a tragedy; reoffending by a sex offender is a horrifying tragedy. The reality is that reoffending rates among sex offenders are significantly lower than reoffending rates among the population as a whole. At the moment, reoffending rates among short-term prisoners are running at about 60%, while reoffending rates among sex offenders are about eight times lower than that. In the case of low-risk sex offenders, the re-conviction rate is 0.8%. That means that 99.2% of people are not re-convicted. But 0.8% is still too high a figure, and there is much more that we can do to try to drive it down.

Where I would disagree slightly with the hon. Gentleman is in connecting this matter to the transforming rehabilitation programme. The question of the management of sex offenders is not about the community rehabilitation companies. Almost every sex offender is managed by the national probation service—in other words, managed by the Government, by civil servants, by a public agency. It has nothing to do with a move towards the private sector or the decisions that have been made to bring in the charitable sector. The report is absolutely explicit—both inspectors are clear on this all the way through—that it is on the performance of the national probation service, not the CRCs. The CRCs are not engaged with in this report. There has been investment in the national probation service since the beginning of the transforming rehabilitation programme. There have been many challenges for the national probation service in terms of its caseload and the types of offences that are coming forward, but, when all is said and done, there is a 9.7% budget increase in the resource going into the service.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Rory Stewart and Imran Hussain

Tuesday 18th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart]

This challenge is absolutely right; we are focusing initially on 10 prisons, as it is difficult to achieve cultural change in 120 prisons simultaneously. The idea is to develop in those 10 prisons the right standard model on drugs, violence and decency, and if we are successful, as I believe we will be by August, to then roll that out across the rest of the estate.

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

The Minister yet again comes to the House all gung-ho, even though he has absolutely no reason to be since safety in our prisons continues to be compromised and they remain in a state of emergency. One such example is HMP Birmingham, one of the most dangerous prisons in the country with conditions there found to be so bad by the prisons inspector that control was taken away from G4S. At the very minimum will the Minister give me assurances, or a guarantee, that this prison will not be returned to the private sector?

[Rory Stewart]

As I have said on a number of occasions, this is not fundamentally about private and public: there are good private prisons and good public prisons, and there are bad private prisons and bad public prisons. But I will give this assurance: unless G4S can demonstrate that it can take back that prison and run it both well and sustainably, we will not be returning the prison to G4S.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Rory Stewart and Imran Hussain

Tuesday 5th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart]

The right hon. Gentleman is a very experienced predecessor in my job. Clearly there is a strong correlation with these new psychoactive substances; it is difficult otherwise to account for the huge rise in violence. The substances seem to drive both self-harming behaviour and extreme violent behaviour. I will give a written answer on exactly when we will fulfil the body-worn camera programme.

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

The Minister can dress it up however he wants, but the bottom line is that cutting 7,000 frontline prison officers between 2010 and 2016 has caused prison safety to plummet. Will he tell the House how many more officers are needed to end this emergency in our prisons and when he will recruit them by?

[Rory Stewart]

This is a very good challenge. Numbers are clearly one of the issues, but there are others, such as psychoactive substances, which have been mentioned. That is why we have recruited an extra 2,500 prison officers. We believe that that gives us the right numbers, because it allows us to have one prison officer for six prisoners to run our keyworker scheme. We see already in key prisons that that is beginning to have a real impact on violence.

Prisons (Interference with Wireless Telegraphy) Bill

Debate between Rory Stewart and Imran Hussain

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 9th May 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

I start by thanking the hon. Member for Lewes for bringing in this important Bill. I will not rehearse many of the points that other hon. Members have made, but I put on record that the Opposition have supported the Bill’s passage through Parliament and continue to support it. We think it is rather unfortunate that this change has to be made via a private Member’s Bill—it should have been forthcoming from the Government—and equally we must put on record that it is not a silver bullet that will resolve the issues in our prison system. I look forward to the Minister’s coming back with a more substantial plan for reform, but in essence, this Bill strengthens the 2012 Act, which we support.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Rory Stewart)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Moon. My hon. Friend the Member for Lewes has very powerfully explained the legal necessity for the Bill and exactly how it will work in law. My hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire, my distinguished predecessor, has pointed out some of the challenges in balancing the need of prisoners to remain in contact with their families and retain a connection to broader society with the dangers posed by illegal phones. The hon. Member for Bradford East has pointed out that, of course, the Bill is just one element in what must be a much bigger strategy. As he says, it is not a silver bullet on its own.

We face an interesting and tricky problem. Those who remember reading “The Man in the Iron Mask” will remember that in 17th century France the only way of communicating out of a prison was to throw a silver plate, with some words scratched on it, out of the window. Today the prison walls are, in some senses, not really walls in the way they were in the 17th century. Modern mobile communication allows criminals, in the worst situations, to continue criminal activities from within those walls, to threaten or abuse people, to harass partners who do not wish to be harassed, or in the most dramatic cases, as my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire pointed out, even to organise drug importations or contract killings from a prison.

Dealing with that has been difficult for the Department, because there are very strong human rights protections in article 8 of the European convention on human rights around the right to a private life, which protect citizens’ rights to communication and prevent interference with communication. Ofcom polices that very strictly. Therefore there were two legal issues that needed to be dealt with. The first was whether a private prison governor could be exempt from the article 8 restrictions and the Ofcom regulations on interference. The Crown is usually exempt, but the question was whether a private prison governor could be exempt. That was largely dealt with in 2012.

Secondly, there was the question of instructing the mobile phone companies to work with the Government on interfering with communications out of a prison. The reason why that is important, as my hon. Friend pointed out, is that without the co-operation of the mobile telephone companies, we would get into a very strange war where we would end up broadcasting signals aggressively against those companies, which could potentially compromise the mobile phone signals of other citizens going about their normal life outside the prison walls.

This law will give much more certainty to the mobile phone companies and governors that there is proper, legal, proportionate and reasonable interference with illegal communication. However, we must bear in mind that we are now pushing ahead with in-cell telephony, which will allow controlled legal conversations between prisoners and their families. All of that is vital, because we face a big problem of violence and crime in prisons and driven from prisons. Tapping the almost 10,000 mobile phones that were seized in a single year and interfering with their ability to communicate is not a silver bullet, but it should help to make prisons a safer and more orderly place in which we can begin to address some of the underlying drivers of violence and crime.

I conclude with great thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes for bringing forward a very useful, practical step toward improving our prisons.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Rory Stewart and Imran Hussain

Tuesday 6th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart]

The hon. Gentleman is a Nottingham Member, and I had a very interesting meeting with the CRC last week on my visit to Nottingham Prison, where the CRC is providing very good Through The Gate services—in fact, services for prisoners in prison that did not exist before the transformation reforms. Before, they were outside the prisons. I do not believe this is a question whether it is done by the private sector, the public sector or the voluntary sector, but it is a question of getting the basic standards right. As I say, that is exactly what we will be assessing the London CRC on on Thursday.

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

Putting it bluntly, probation privatisation has been a disaster. Despite that, the Government are still pursuing their privatisation agenda. Last week, the Government outsourced night staff in probation hostels. Given that those hostels house some of the most dangerous ex-offenders, will the Minister accept full responsibility for any impact on public safety resulting from that ideological outsourcing?

[Rory Stewart]

The shadow Minister refers to a decision by the National Probation Service—which is a Government- run service, so it is not a CRC service—to bring in additional contracted staff to provide double night duty in the hostels. That has been done because it is not work that is traditionally done by trained probation officers, but by contracted staff. Of course I will accept full responsibility for that decision.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Rory Stewart and Imran Hussain

Wednesday 29th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart]

Clearly, Gulf states, which are increasingly large parts of the economy of the world, are central to humanitarian response. There have been significant contributions from the Gulf—from Saudi, UAE and Qatar—and the Secretary of State continues to encourage those contributions, particularly those that address the famines in the horn of Africa.

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

As President Trump slashes aid spending, it is more important than ever that global, outward-looking nations live up to their responsibilities, not shirk them, to fill the aid funding gaps. Will the Minister commit to working with our partners on increasing their aid spending, to show that despite Brexit the UK can still be a global leader embracing its global responsibilities?

[Rory Stewart]

We agree absolutely with that. It is central that other countries meet their targets. We are very proud to be able to stand tall in the world, particularly at a time when children are starving to death. That is why the Secretary of State is leading international coalitions to increase the international commitment to these desperate issues.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Rory Stewart and Imran Hussain

Wednesday 22nd February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

The Rohingya are among the most persecuted people in the world today. In recent weeks and months, they have faced new waves of violence perpetrated by the Burmese Government. How much of the £95 million budget for the Burma project will go towards much-needed assistance for the Rohingya, and what steps are the Government taking to ensure that that happens?

[The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Rory Stewart)]

We absolutely agree that the situation for the Rohingya is deeply troubling. We are dealing with it in different ways. I raised it personally on my last visit to Burma with the Minister of Home Affairs and Aung San Suu Kyi. DFID staff are accessing the Rohingya areas and we continue to work with Kofi Annan and the UN system, but the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to say that it is vital that we get humanitarian access and support to the Rohingya population.

Commonwealth Development Corporation Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Rory Stewart and Imran Hussain

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 6th December 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Imran Hussain]

Yes.

[Rory Stewart]

Q Very quickly, for Tom McDonald and Sir Paul Collier, Saranel has just said that CDC exists for the UK to make a profit in the global south, and the countries are not really benefiting from those investments. Do you agree with that?

Tom McDonald: We did not assess the whole portfolio, in terms of the impact that it was having. We have to rely to some extent on the prospective assessment of impact that CDC is now doing on a regularised basis for all its investments. I honestly cannot give a yes or no answer as to the impact on the south.

Commonwealth Development Corporation Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Rory Stewart and Imran Hussain

Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 6th December 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Imran Hussain]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship today, Ms Ryan.

I will sum up the points that we are making. My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth has gone into some detail, as always, on where we stand. I want to place the Labour Front Bench firmly in line with his views, to answer the point made by the hon. Member for Rochford and Southend East.

The issue here is the Government’s intention. We are not in any way, shape or form anti-DFI or against the spirit of the corporation. It was brought in by a Labour Government many years ago and we accept, on the record, that the CDC has been improved since 2011, as I said on Second Reading. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth set out, we want to be satisfied on the rationale behind the level of increase; the lack of strategies and investment policies—the phrase “cart before horse” has been mentioned on many occasions and I will not go into it further—the CDC’s capacity; and the fact that it has not requested this money. Those are all pertinent points. Finally, regarding the concern about where and how this money is currently being spent, I agree with Members on both sides of the Committee on the logical point of view that has been put forward. Nevertheless, that concern remains.

The Minister’s earlier intervention was most helpful, when he set out his reason for why the business case, the strategy and the investment policy were not forthcoming. He gave the guarantee, which I want to press him on, that no money would go to the CDC unless it was requested by the CDC. Even so, it has to be done in the light of a proper business case, a strategy and an investment policy. Secondly, I press him to give some indication as to when those important strategies and policies will come forward. They are central to these proposals and I hope he genuinely gives us dates and assurances in that regard.

[Rory Stewart]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ryan.

I will begin by saying that I have a lot of sympathy with the points that the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth is making; they are all incredibly important. He has an encyclopaedic knowledge of CDC and has identified a number of issues in relation to CDC that we take very seriously. They range across its accounting principles, its reporting framework, the scope of the countries in which it operates, its overall effectiveness, its absorptive capacity, the strategy and business case systems, theories of change and types of investment. I think these are all good concerns and there is nothing mentioned by the hon. Gentleman that I would disagree with in principle. These are the kinds of questions we would expect DFID and Parliament to ask, as well as CDC to ask of itself before it makes an investment.

The real question is what is appropriate to put in the Bill, what is appropriate to be done through Parliament, what is appropriate to be done through the Department and what is appropriate to be done through CDC. That is where I hope I can provide a bit of assurance to right hon. and hon. Members of all parties.

I think we can take it as read that there is an overall agreement that we should give some more money to CDC. There is some disagreement about how much more money—the different amendments suggest different views on how much money and how that money is calculated—but the basic principle is that CDC is a good thing, that economic development is a good thing, that DFIs are a good thing and that, particularly at this moment, as Sir Paul Collier pointed out strongly in this morning’s evidence session, we should be investing more in economic development and jobs in Africa. That is something we all agree. The question is how we do it and how we ensure that it is done in the right way.

The hon. Member for Glasgow North proposed a quite detailed amendment, but there is a small technical issue. He suggested that we aim at a 5% ODA amount, but there are two issues with that. We considered looking at that in the Bill, but the reasons we rejected it were twofold. There is an issue with confusing a stock with a flow. In other words, the measure is designed to create the capital that is invested and reinvested over time— that initial investment made by the Attlee Government continues to be recycled nearly 70 years later—whereas the ODA allocation is an annual allocation and an annual spend.

There is an issue around trying to compare a stock and a flow, and we can go on to that. In fact, rather good graphs have been produced, comparing stock and flow investments of Germany, France and the Netherlands, showing that, in proportional terms, Germany is spending nearly three times as much and France is spending nearly twice as much as we are. The reason I have not deployed those kinds of arguments is that I just do not think that that stock and flow comparison is good.

However, there is a more technical reason why we would reject the exact amendment. The way in which the amendment is written—at least on the basis of the analysis by our in-house lawyers—is that it would refer to the entire cap for the entire sum available to CDC. In other words, that 5% would not be 5% of future money. The way in which the amendment is drafted means that it would incorporate the £1.5 billion of its existing money. That would therefore limit us to only a further £1.5 billion over a five-year period. That would not be 5% of ODA. It would be about 2.5% of ODA, which we think would be considerably lower. The £3 billion number, which is what right hon. and hon. Members have been getting at, is a more plausible figure as an additional amount to the £1.5 billion. We can talk about that over time.

Very quickly, I will deal with the question of additional responsibilities, which is at the core of the questions asked by the shadow Secretary of State—the hon. Member for Edmonton—and the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Bradford East. The basic questions are: are we are putting the cart before the horse, why are we using taxpayers’ money for this kind of investment, when will we present our strategy, what are our real intentions, and what kind of guarantees are taking place? The answer is that, in effect, we have a whole series of procedures. What we are asking Parliament to do is only the first stage of a whole series of checks and balances.

We are asking this Committee, and we are asking Parliament, to agree to the principle of lifting the existing cap on CDC—in other words, putting CDC more into the type of arrangement that we would have with any of our other donors. It is very unusual that CDC has a capped amount. That is not true for the amount of money we give to an NGO or to the World Bank. In fact, we are actually giving more to the World Bank than we would envisage giving to CDC. We are asking Parliament to lift the cap.

The next bit—the question of how the business strategy, the business case and individual investment decisions are written—would then be taken forward by the Department, in line with the UK aid strategy, and debated in Parliament. Directly to answer the question of the hon. Member for Bradford East, who wanted dates, in December 2016 we will complete our business strategy, which will lay out the strategy for the next five years for CDC. It is the strategy that the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth was referring to as our last strategy. We will have a new strategy of that sort. That strategy will do a number of things that will address concerns raised in many of the amendments as the Bill passes through the House. It will, for example, tighten our impact assessments, put more focus on gender and set a cap on India. The next thing that will happen is that in summer 2017—this is quite a slow process—we will bring together a business case to draw down a promissory note of money; in other words, to say, “This is the amount of money we believe is the kind of money that CDC may need to call up.”

[Rory Stewart]

Indeed. I am happy to repeat that for the record. The intention is that, in our forthcoming business strategy, there will be a cap on the amount that CDC can spend on India.

As we move forward to the summer, we will produce the business case. The business case will define the amount of money, whatever that is. It could be, for example, £3 billion, which is roughly in line with some of the amendments that have come forward, but we would have the option to go up to £4.5 billion. I do not honestly believe that that business case will be going up to £4.5 billion, but we would have the option to do that.

The next stage is that CDCs needs to make very detailed investment decisions, which take a long time. A lot of these investment decisions take two to three years. Let us say that CDC was going into solar power in Burundi. It would have to get in on the ground. It would have to ensure that it had a viable business and then it would have to go through our development grid, which is the next stage of the process. That means ensuring that it had checked GDP per capita, it had checked the amount of capital available, it had checked the business environment and it had checked that this is a sector that creates jobs. That is just the first stage.

The next stage CDC needs to go through is to present a development impact theory. That individual investment needs to have a theory: exactly what contribution is this going to make to jobs, economic development and poverty alleviation? Within our strategy, at the end of this year, DFID will ask CDC to publish that development impact theory, so that the theory can be seen case by case with every investment and it will be possible to challenge that theory.

At that stage, CDC would then come back and call down on the promissory note to call down that money. Then other forms of monitoring come on. We are a 100% shareholder of CDC, which is why some of the analogies with giving money to NGOs or World Bank institutions are slightly different. This is us giving money to a wholly owned DFID institution. Every quarter, we as DFID shareholders meet the board and assess its performance. We have an annual review process. On top of that we have all the other processes: NAO, Public Accounts Committee and the International Development Committee. Independent Commission for Aid Impact reports would also be able to get into the business of CDC. It is that and, finally, it is our basic confidence in our institution that allows us to even begin the process. We would not come to the Committee asking for permission to make more money available unless we were confident that we had a good management team in place with a strong history and a strong track record of development; otherwise, we would be wasting hon. Members’ time.

We believe that this is a good institution that will be in a position for us to produce the business case, and that it will be in a position to find investments. I absolutely guarantee—

[Imran Hussain]

Is the Minister giving an absolute assurance that no further investment will go to CDC before the full, thorough business case and investment policy comes before the House again?

[Rory Stewart]

I am giving an absolute assurance to the hon. Gentleman that no money will be given to CDC until a full strategy is developed and published, which can be debated in the House—that is a strategy coming in December—and no money will go to CDC until a full business case is written in huge detail, which will be prepared in the summer of 2017. Following on from that, there will be the individual investment decisions. I am happy to give that assurance. On that, I would ask the hon. Gentleman kindly to withdraw the amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Imran Hussain]

For the sake of avoiding repetition, I will cite the case I previously outlined, because I think the arguments are exactly the same. The only additional point is that I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth, who makes the point that using a statutory instrument to double the increase, if not more, is something that MPs will be uncomfortable with, for obvious reasons.

[Rory Stewart]

Ms Ryan, thank you very much for chairing this debate. I will deal with these issues very quickly, because I do not wish to detain people very long. A few issues of fact: first, this will not be an additional £12 billion on top of the £6 billion. We are talking about lifting the ceiling, so it will be an additional £6 billion. Essentially, the whole debate—we keep coming back to it in different ways—is about the fact that the CDC, through an accident in history, is governed by completely different rules from any other body to which we can give money. In the initial legislation, from 1948 onwards, a cap was put on the amount of money that the Government could put in. An additional cap was put in during the early 2000s when the Government were proposing to sell off CDC. The cap was put in there simply so that the Government did not pump more money into this organisation before it was sold off. That was a perfectly legitimate intention of primary legislation, but it puts us in an eccentric position in that it is possible for us to give, theoretically, unlimited money to an NGO, to a research council or any other body, to the World Bank and to other financial institutions, whereas the CDC is the only institution for which we have to return to primary legislation every time we wish to give it money.

The point about this ability to go up to £12 billion in the future would be that it would try to put the CDC into a similar position to the other recipients. In other words, on the basis of Parliament, the Minister and the Department, a decision would be made on the strategy on how the money was to be allocated. Money could be allocated to an NGO, it could be allocated to CDC, and we would do that through the normal departmental process.

The hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth asked about time. My strong belief, which I am happy to put on the record, is that the money we are asking for—that first ability to increase by £4.5 billion—would be the absolute maximum over the next five-year period up to 2021. We do not intend to come back for the next money until at least after 2021-22. At that point a new Government—it could be a Government, theoretically, of the Labour party—would have the option to come, through secondary legislation, and ask for the ability to increase the cap up to £12 billion. That, again, I would anticipate being for continuous, steady state investment. That £12 billion simply reflects, again, about £1 billion a year from the 2021 period going forward to 2026. That is the kind of money we are talking about and that is the kind of plan that is in place.

To conclude, we have heard very detailed, powerful and encyclopaedic speeches from the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth. He has already made enormous arguments about the sectors and countries in which we should be investing. I request, if possible, that we do not return to those when the amendments are discussed, because they have already been made in enormous detail during the debate so far.

--- Later in debate ---

[Imran Hussain]

I associate myself with comments made by the SNP Front Bench team and, indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth. I am not going to repeat what has been said, but I will make two additional points. The CDC should work towards the SDGs as much as possible, but as we stand, there is some confusion around their overall monitoring. Those criteria have not been released and I urge the Minister to consider that.

The other option, not the least option open to the Minister—and I am sure he will give assurances—is a matter that can also be dealt with through the business case and the strategies enshrined in that, to make sure the most effective way of contributing to the SDGs is laid out before Parliament.

[Rory Stewart]

This is an example of a clause where we strongly agree that SDGs are central to what the CDC should be doing. We are already delivering on these things. In 2015 alone, 326 women received jobs through the CDC investments; that is SDG 5. We provided 56,000 GW of electricity; that is SDG 7. SDG 8 on economic growth is, of course, central to everything the CDC does.

The bigger argument is that, as the SDGs were presented, people talked about a $2.5 trillion demand per annum for investment in the world’s poorest countries. The CDC is the major instrument that will be used by the British Government to deliver that kind of investment into the private sector.

However, to respond to the shadow Minister’s point, I think this is a good way of focusing the Department’s mind and making sure that, as we develop the strategy for the CDC going forward over the next five years, the SDGs are baked into that process. We take the SNP spokesman’s suggestion that it is important to understand the SDGs as a holistic set: that we do not simply look at them goal by goal, but that we group them together.

--- Later in debate ---

[Imran Hussain]

Again, I associate myself with the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth. I have two additional general points. We have to look at the 2011 review. There were clear purposes behind it, one of which was that the CDC had lost its focus. As a result of the review, we saw the new universe of countries and, as I said earlier, have ended up in a better place today than we were in four or five years ago.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that we must not lose our focus on development impact and where it can be greatest, and nor must CDC. We must continue to focus on the poorest countries, where the impact will be felt the most and where it is most needed. The CDC’s ultimate goal must be to alleviate poverty, and that goal is not best achieved in some of the countries that have been used as examples.

[Rory Stewart]

If I may, I will focus not on particular sectors but on the issues addressed by the new clauses: the type of countries in which CDC should be working.

I wish to make four arguments. First, there are significant technical problems with the amendments, but I do not wish to take up too much of the Committee’s time with them, so I will move on.

Secondly, there is a conceptual difference between DFIs and the bilateral programmes at DFID. It is perfectly reasonable for a Government looking at their overseas development programme not to limit themselves to where they happen to have a bilateral programme. A bilateral programme traditionally means somewhere where we happen to have a DFID office and are running our own bilateral programmes through our own staff. There might be an argument that we do not wish to have a bilateral programme in a country because we already have CDC operations taking place in that country.

The third argument, which I again do not wish to rehearse because it covers a lot of the issues that we have talked about today, is how to get the balance right between Parliament—it is absolutely right that Parliament should have the job of determining the overall financial allocation—and the discretion given to the Secretary of State and the Department to determine country programmes. It would be unfortunate if we ended up specifying in primary legislation a specific list of countries where we would and would not operate, as a result of the judgment calls that a Secretary of State or Department, from any party, has to make—the world changes very quickly.

Right hon. and hon. Members have raised some difficult judgment calls. India has 35% of the world’s population who exist on $1.25 a day, which is more, in absolute numbers, than the number of poor people in sub-Saharan Africa. That is a difficult philosophical discussion, and different people on different sides of the House will have different views on whether we wish to focus on that, but whether we focus on those people or not seems reasonably to be a judgment call for the Department and perfectly in accordance with the International Development Act 2002. It is also true that it may be necessary to make investments in a wealthier state in order to help a poorer state. It may be necessary to use South Africa’s financial institutions in order to support poverty alleviation in other African countries.

Finally, it may be necessary to respond to quickly changing events in the world. For example, nobody predicted the conflagration in Syria. We are suddenly having to put bilateral programmes into middle income countries—Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon—where we never had bilateral programmes four years ago, in order to deal with 3.5 million refugees, horrendous killing, an extreme humanitarian disaster and a UN tier 3 emergency. The International Development Committee has been asking us to get the CDC to invest in exactly those situations. The new clause would prohibit us in primary legislation from doing that. With respect, I believe that these things are best left to the discretion of the Department. We are very happy to share all our thinking on how those decisions are made with Parliament in the normal fashion. With that, I hope that the new clause will be withdrawn.