Strategy for International Development

Sarah Champion Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is always a pleasure to serve under your guidance. I also wish to thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate on the spending of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office on the strategy for international development.

A year ago, I stood in this Chamber to open an estimates day debate on the FCDO’s main estimate. At that point, the Department had recently changed the format of its spending plans, which made scrutiny incredibly difficult. I wish to take this opportunity to thank FCDO officials who have worked with House of Commons staff over the past year to restore and improve the quality of information available in the estimate, allowing my Committee and Members to fulfil their crucial role in holding the Government to account for how they spend their aid.

Much has changed since I made that speech last year, but one in 10 people around the world are still living in extreme poverty. That simply cannot be right. Today, I wish to reflect on the enormous potential that lies within the poorest communities in the world and on how the UK Government’s aid spending should seek to develop that potential, transforming lives and creating a fairer, more inclusive world for all.

In the past few weeks, we have finally seen the Government release their new international development strategy. Combined with this main estimate, the approach signals a new era in how the UK spends its development funding, but I am simply not convinced that this approach will help the very poorest people in the world. It is clear that the Government’s priorities are increasingly about trade, security and creating British jobs, but the legally mandated objective of UK aid spending is to reduce poverty. That must remain front and centre.

The Government’s plans described a more hard-nosed, investment-driven approach to UK official development assistance. Capital investment expenditure—spending that is used, for example, on infrastructure projects—has increased by 49% compared with the last financial year, but relative day-to-day spending, from which traditional aid programmes would typically be funded, has increased by only 8.5%.

Investment partnerships are becoming a more dominant feature of UK aid. British International Investment will receive a further £200 million in capital from the FCDO, and the amount of funding channelled through BII is set to increase dramatically over the next two years. Economic and investment-led development certainly has a place in any coherent development strategy, but it tends to benefit those who are engaged, or are able to engage, with the formal labour market. I am not convinced that this approach will help the poorest and most marginalised groups around the world. I am just not convinced that it will help them to achieve their potential or create long-lasting development in their communities.

Putting all of the UK’s development eggs in the economic basket will mean that swathes of people are left behind: disabled people, minorities, and women and girls. How does the FCDO’s approach help them to reach their potential and enrich their communities? I have no doubt that UK investments can fund and support some truly transformative projects. However, we need to get the basics right first, otherwise how will those projects succeed?

Investing in new roads does not help a girl who cannot access clean water. A new telecoms network is not much use to a boy who cannot get vital vaccines. We need basic support in place first, before those investments can succeed. Get the foundations right, and then development will flourish. Under DFID, it was clear how UK aid was working towards the attainment of the UN sustainable development goals—the map to lifting people out of poverty and keeping them out of it—but this strategy barely refers to the SDGs.

It is hard to know whether we are on the right path to development without the map that the SDGs provide. With the integration of development and wider foreign policy objectives, helping the poor increasingly seems to be seen as a by-product of British foreign policy, rather than an end in itself. In fact, this Government strategy has no qualms about UK aid being “overtly geopolitical”. The strategy seeks to actively draw lower income countries away from the influence of authoritarian regimes, and to promote freedom and democracy around the world.

However, what about the communities living in countries that are not a pressing priority for achieving a foreign policy aim, or whose Governments do not share UK objectives? Are we leaving those communities behind? What happens to their potential? In my Committee’s work, we have heard that different types of development problems require different approaches. Sometimes spending through bilateral programmes is effective, and sometimes putting funds through multilaterals—such as Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, or the World Food Programme—is more effective. We need to use the right tools for the job.

The UK is stepping back from its commitment to multilateral co-operation and placing more emphasis on bilateral spending. The Foreign Secretary told my Committee that, in 2022-23, £3.7 billion of UK aid funding will be spent through multilaterals. By 2024-25, it will be £2.4 billion—a 35% reduction in just two years. The UK’s contribution to major multilateral institutions means that we generate goodwill and we also have a huge influence over the way global institutions spend tens of billions of dollars each year.

Our multilateral investments are also a lever in investments from elsewhere, meaning that they have a multiplier effect, but the UK will be reducing its contribution to the World Bank by an astonishing 54%. If the UK is looking to increase its influence on the global stage, it seems counter-intuitive to step away from that leadership role.

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Chair of the Select Committee, who is making a brilliant speech. Does she agree that it is in Britain’s interests to use multilateral institutions, rather than to simply donate bilaterally, because that multiplies the impact that we can have?

[Sarah Champion]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely correct. At a time of such international uncertainty, a policy of giving away influence and friendships that have taken decades, if not centuries, to build up seems a very strange way to further the interests of this country, let alone the poorest in the world.

[Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is making a very good speech, and I strongly agree with her point about multilateralism. May I take her back to a debate she initiated in Westminster Hall on the plight of the Palestinians and the role of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency—a crucial part of the multilateral system that does so much to support Palestinians in the worst conditions in Gaza, the west bank and elsewhere in the middle east? I am sure my hon. Friend agrees that it would be good to hear from the Minister how the UNRWA pledging conference went—the Minister was good enough to reference the conference in her response to the debate last week—as well as what Britain’s contribution was and why no Minister from the UK attended.

[Sarah Champion]

I second everything my hon. Friend has said. We have a number of significant pledges that are coming up or being processed—I am thinking, for example, of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. It would be so short-sighted to step away from investments that we have been making for so long, when we are at a real crisis point on many issues, whether that is solving the problem of malaria or HIV or just maintaining what we have already built up. So I completely support what my hon. Friend has said.

The Government are blunting a key tool in the development toolbox by not continuing their support of multilaterals. Let us remember that they have chosen to cap the aid budget at 0.5% of gross national income. We face an unprecedented set of crises around the world—the war in Ukraine, hunger in the horn of Africa and the devastating impacts of climate change—so we must spend every penny of the budget in the most effective way possible. Sadly, I am not convinced that the direction we are taking with this spending allows us to do that.

There is enormous potential in the poorest communities around the world, and UK aid can empower people to help themselves, creating long-term, sustainable economies, but we need to help lift people out of poverty first and make those transformations permanent.

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[Mr Mitchell]

The hon. Lady has said more eloquently than me precisely why this is such an important aspect of British policy and also why it is strongly approved of by the Daily Mail and the right, which is because it helps achieve the aim of mitigating and addressing flows of migration and refugees. That brings me to my next point, of which again the Chair of the Select Committee may not approve. I am not opposed to sending people who have been processed here, and who are not eligible for asylum here, to Rwanda, if it is prepared to take them, which it is. I know Rwanda very well. I was there recently for the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting, participating in an investment conference. It is a wonderful place, and I have no objection in principle to us sending people there, once they have been processed here, if Rwandans are prepared to take them.

However, there are two problems with the current policy. One is that it will not work, and the second is that it is extraordinarily expensive. In this business, there is no alternative but to put in the work, to do the hard yards and to recognise that we have to process far more quickly and effectively people who are coming to our shores, many of whom are fleeing persecution in great jeopardy. We need to hear their cases and process them.

Secondly, we need to open up lawful, legal and safe routes. At the moment, those legal and safe routes do not exist. They exist for Ukrainians, and they did exist for Afghanis—and some time ago for Syrians—but for others they do not. Some 87% of the people who come to our shores come from just four countries, and we should remember that 75% of them end up being found eligible to stay in the country. We need these proper legal routes, we need to process in the right way and we need to restore the relationship with France.

The relationship with France, as anyone who has engaged with the French Government in any way in recent weeks and months will know, is appalling and needs to be restored. There are huge reservoirs of knowledge in this country about France and of good will with senior French politicians. Politicians on both sides of the channel know each other well, and the relationship has never been worse than it is today. It urgently needs to be restored if we are to address the issues that exist in the channel. They are issues of life and death and of order, and we cannot address them properly if we are at loggerheads with a country 22 miles away across the channel.

The final thing that we have to do if we are to resolve these issues is renegotiate the 1951 Geneva convention on refugees, which was set up largely by British effort. It was British officials who helped corral all the different parties to accept this international convention, but it was made at a time when travel was not as easy as today. The situation has completely changed. If we are to resolve this problem, which will get worse because of climate change migration, we need to understand that the rich world has to play its part if it expects the poor world to comply. That is a real job of work.

On 25 July, just under a year ago, I had this precise conversation with the Prime Minister, who described the analysis as excellent, but nothing has been done in the past year to give some extra strength and a boost to the international system to do something about it. That is my objection to the Rwanda plan. It is not that I am seduced by the relevant lobby; my objection is one of severe practicality and cost, and the plan just will not work.

Having broken our promise on the budget and having effectively abolished the Department, we are now left with a big budget being spent in ways that are determined by the Foreign Office. I remind the House that it was a law of Whitehall that while the Foreign Office did prose, the Department for International Development did money. Whenever Tony Blair and David Cameron went to an international conference where money was being discussed, they always took a senior DFID official, because DFID, as even the Treasury would admit, was extremely good at money and running money.

Frankly, the idea of these brilliant diplomats who prosecute British diplomacy so well being responsible for and running multimillion-pound development programmes should give the taxpayer the heebie-jeebies. What will happen is this: the Daily Mail will discover examples of Foreign Office misspending of the ODA budget, and it will rightly pick up on them. It will say, “If Britain cannot honour its pledge to the taxpayer of value for money, and if it spends money badly in this way, why do we have this budget at all? Why don’t we spend all the money on our schools and hospitals here?” The argument will be made for abolishing the budget altogether, and if it is made on the back of misspending, it will be heard by our constituents.

The Independent Commission for Aid Impact is the watchdog that reports on international development—rightly, to the Select Committee and not to Ministers who can sweep inconvenient truths under the carpet. It draws its power from the legislature and is an important new part of the Government’s architecture. Officials hate it because, of course, it can look at what they are doing and expose them. It is the taxpayer’s friend, it reports to Parliament, and Ministers have the benefit of its work, attention and rigour. It is a vital tool of making policy, so I urge the Minister, who understands such things, to become its strong supporter.

[Sarah Champion]

I pay tribute to the right hon. Gentleman for the formation of the ICAI, which absolutely does its job of scrutinising where the money goes. Does he share my concern that, at the moment, its future budget has not been signed off and it looks like its funding will be reduced, which means that its ability to scrutinise will be reduced as well?

[Mr Mitchell]

Of course, all the officials in the Foreign Office will want to reduce ICAI expenditure—first because they will have perfectly respectable arguments for where else the money could be spent, and secondly because they know that the way to emasculate it is to cut its expenditure. That will mean that it cannot investigate without fear and favour on behalf of the taxpayer who, as I say, is the main beneficiary. I agree with the hon. Lady and very much hope that her voice will be heard.

I will end on the subject of China, which seems to bring the whole argument together. In 2009, the Conservative Opposition decided that all development money for China would end. We did that because China has roared out of poverty; if we look at what China and India have done for poverty alleviation, we see that the results are sensationally good. China has done so much to tackle poverty and its GDP is bigger than ours, so there was clearly no case for expecting the British taxpayer to pay any money at all for development in China. I was sent by David Cameron to inform Madam Fu, the Chinese ambassador, of the decision that if we were elected and had the privilege of forming a Government, there would be no more ODA spend to China. She gave me a tremendous ticking off, but the Chinese accepted it.

When we went into government in 2010, the first thing I did when I had the privilege and honour of going into my new DFID office was to say, “No more ODA money for China. That was our commitment at the election to our constituents, and unless it’s legally due now, there’s to be no more ODA spend in China.” Basically, since that day, DFID—when it was DFID—has not spent money in China. There were long-tail projects that it could not end, but apart from that, it did not spend any more.

Significant money continues to be spent in China, however, by the Foreign Office, and it is not really development money. Providing that money is, the Foreign Office thinks, the best way to suck up to the Chinese Government, but it is not spent sensibly. Between 2009 and 2011, in the incoming years of the Conservative Government, the expenditure was reduced from £49 million to £15 million. Between 2014 and 2019, however, that ODA expenditure—taxpayers’ money—on the development budget in China rose from £23 million to £68 million. That was the highest figure, but I understand that it was £64 million in 2020. What on earth are the Government doing spending ODA money in China? We promised the electorate that we would not do it. DFID did not do it. It is not a development priority, there is no case for it and it should be stopped.

The second thing I ask of the Minister—the first was her trenchant support for the ICAI—is to commit to the House that there will be full transparency on ODA money that is spent in China. How much is it, and on what is it being spent? There is a suggestion that some of this money has been spent on prison reform in China. If that is the case, then for reasons that everyone will understand, it is an absolute disgrace. I hope the Minister will reassure us that, if that was happening, it is not happening any more and it will not happen again.

There has been further disingenuity, I would say, about spending in China, with the former Foreign Secretary announcing he was reducing it by 95%. That prompts the question of what it was doing being spent in the first place, but I suspect that figure is 95% of what the Foreign Office was spending and does not include what was being spent by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. I end on this point: I am pretty sure that the money spent by BEIS has been tied aid. As the House will know, it is absolutely not allowed to spend money on tied aid—we are subject to numerous conventions we have signed not to do so—and I think it may even be against the law.

My point is that, because we no longer have the rigour and expertise of a separate Government Department that ensures this money is well spent, delivers results and gives value for money both to our partners on the ground and to the British taxpayer—we have lost that—we now have the very unrigorous and uncertain system of controls that previously led to the Pergau dam issue. We do not have the controls we had in the past, and the reputation of Foreign Office Ministers, the Foreign Office and the Government are very much at risk as a result.

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[Layla Moran]

I thank the hon. Member very much for his intervention. I have seen this in the Ukraine crisis with a charity I know that operates in Moldova. The smaller charities are often very nimble and can use their knowledge straightaway on the ground. However, this needs to be “and”, not “or”. They cannot do it all; they have to do it in partnership with the multilaterals. Taking from one and not feeding into the other is the wrong approach.

In my view, the international development strategy emphasises short-term quick wins and overlooks the deeper causes of poverty and vulnerability. I will pick one specific example about women and girls, who are purportedly a priority in this strategy. The strategy claims that the Government

“intend to restore funding for this vital work.”

I ask the Minister to clarify what exactly she and the Government mean by “restore”, and to what level. This is not just about funding for schools. If we do not fund period poverty plans, sexual health plans and water plans, we find that women and girls are the first ones to start making up the gap.

There should not just be a snappy headline with the three Es of education, empowerment and ending violence against women and girls. Those are pointless unless they are followed up behind by things that are actually going to make a difference. I pay tribute again to the hon. Member for Rotherham and her Committee, because her use of privilege to make public the equalities report showed that the Government knew that their cuts were going to affect women, girls and minorities the most—and yet they have the brass neck to suggest in this strategy that it is their priority. This is the typical doublespeak we have come to rely on from this Government. To see what the Government are actually doing, look at what they say they are doing best. By and large, people will probably find that it is the thing the Government are doing worst.

[Sarah Champion]

The hon. Member is making an incredibly powerful speech. She has worked so hard in this area, and I commend her for it. Does she agree that the development strategy is not a strategy? We do not know what the strategy is. This is a collection of buzzwords with a few statistics put in, but where is the underpinning vision, which is meant to be the SDGs and reducing and removing poverty? It just does not exist.

[Layla Moran]

The hon. Member is absolutely right: it is the strategy that is completely missing from the Government.

This is not just about the money. We are debating the estimates and the money, so that is the right thing to focus on, but what determines whether money is being spent effectively is knowing what we want to achieve with that money. I will tell hon. Members what the Liberal Democrat vision is: the eradication of poverty, human rights for all, and a bolstering, not a deterioration, of the international rules-based order. Under our plans, the 0.7% target would be restored and a completely different approach to foreign policy delivered. I am sorry to say that the Government seem to be doing the exact opposite.

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[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for calling me to speak in this important debate. It is an absolute pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Richard Foord). I spent many childhood summers in Cullompton, so I know what a beautiful constituency he represents. I can see already that he will be a strong advocate for his constituents, local schools—he spotted a lobbying opportunity in his maiden speech—and farmers. He displayed an internationalist outlook, which I certainly welcome, as I am sure we all do. I am delighted that he chose to speak in this debate for his maiden speech; I think that shows real acuity. What a day, here in Parliament, on which to give his maiden speech! I look forward to following him in many speeches to come.

I campaigned, along with hundreds of thousands of people across the country, for the move to 0.7%. Many are in this Chamber now, but they are also in towns, villages and cities across the country. That decision had cross-party support and was one we could all be proud of—proud to be British, and proud to achieve 0.7% of GDP on development spending. The fact that it was cut is deeply disappointing to me, to Opposition Members and to people across the country, including many of my constituents who write to me. It is very disappointing that the 0.7% target has not been reinstated in these estimates. Achieving 0.7% was the right thing to do. It was the wrong thing to do—it is a false economy—to cut it to 0.5%. That diminishes our position in the world and has damaged many successful poverty-reducing, conflict-cutting and climate change-tackling programmes. There is a £4.6 billion black hole and 1,000 programmes have been or will be cut. It would be welcome if the Minister could confirm whether that is correct.

I want to focus not only on how much and which programmes have been cut, but on how the remaining money is spent. I am concerned about the merger of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department for International Development, and the fact that so much money in this strategy will be under the remit of ambassadors. I have spoken to many ambassadors and they have not had the training to spend development funds. They have been trained to be excellent diplomats and we are really proud of them. They do a great job for us around the world, but development expertise is very, very different. Will the Minister confirm that the training programme for ambassadors has changed as a result, right from selection through to achieving their positions? It needs to change dramatically if the money is to be spent in a way that achieves our aims.

Then we come to our aims. What are the aims of the international strategy? I have serious concerns that they are not clear, that they break our promises to achieve the sustainable development goals and that they are not to cut poverty.

Anyone who has followed any of my speeches will not be surprised by the two areas on which I will focus today, but I have not plucked them out of thin air. I have worked in development around the world for 25 years. I have worked for Christian Aid, Oxfam, CAFOD—the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development—and Water Aid. I did a round of the development agencies, which meant that I had the privilege of visiting many countries and seeing programmes that are funded by the British public around the world. Two key areas that can achieve poverty eradication are: tackling conflict, focusing especially on genocide prevention; and tackling climate change, focusing especially on water sanitation and hygiene.

Commitments have been made across the House and we have said many times in debates that we want to prevent genocide. We have stood here and said, “Never again,” and I am sure we all agree that this crime of crimes must be prevented. That has been highlighted this week by the international ministerial conference on freedom of religion or belief, which is being hosted by our Government and is happening now in London.

Religious persecution and the targeting of people because of their ethnicity go hand in hand, but to achieve the aim of “Never again” in relation to genocide, we need genocide prevention strategies across all the countries in which we work to predict when early steps towards genocide are being taken, to prevent genocide through peace building and to fund social and economic actions and targeted intervention to prevent it. There is a list of continuing genocides around the world and of areas where there are moves towards genocide. Our projects and programmes can make all the difference. They will not be glamorous or hit the headlines, but they will save lives in their millions.

The Foreign Secretary’s promise to restore the humanitarian and women and girls’ development budgets has been broken because of the aid cuts. Compared with the spend in 2020, the cuts include the Ethiopian budget by 90% and the Syrian budget by 64%. Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the world, has had a cut of 40% and Sudan has had a 74% cut. There is an unprecedented famine in the horn of Africa, yet the cuts to humanitarian budgets continue regardless.

Last year, the British Government made famine prevention their flagship humanitarian agenda when they held the G7 presidency, and the UK played a lead role in convening discussions on famine prevention in the UN Security Council. That is—or should be—a key feature of the international development strategy, but there is a perception that the UK risks being somewhat missing in action on humanitarian aid because of the cuts. For example, in 2017, when 16 million people in the horn of Africa were facing severe hunger, the UK provided £861 million as part of the global response. That helped to avert widespread famine. The work that was done then has helped to reduce the number of people who are facing famine, even now, in the next period of crisis. Despite that, however, 23 million people in 2022 are facing famine as a result of drought, conflict and covid, but the UK has provided—bear in mind that the figure was £861 million in 2017—£72 million to support people in Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and South Sudan. This is the worst famine in that area in 40 years, yet we have dramatically cut our support. That is not what the British people want from the aid budget.

[Sarah Champion]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point and she knows at first hand the importance of our contribution to the international and aid sector, particularly on famine prevention. My Committee has just published its report on food security, and there is so much more that the Government could do to take a strategic leadership view. However, the countries that my hon. Friend mentioned, where famine is running wild, seem to be completely off the Government’s radar and hidden. One can only assume that unless we raise the profile of those countries, this will just keep going.

[Fleur Anderson]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that issue. This debate has been really important in enabling us to talk about the issues, because these cuts seem to be happening quietly and in secret. If British people knew about the cuts to famine prevention and the other things going on, they would not be happy. These are not our values; these are not British values.

The House will hear no argument from me against championing women and girls, which is in the development strategy, but the budgets for women and girls are being cut and are not being prioritised. The Government are not putting their money where their mouth is. CARE International estimates that £1.9 billion was cut from women and girls projects in 2021. I would welcome any assurance from the Minister that that is not correct and that the budgets for women and girls are being protected. I would like to hear that in her response.

The international development strategy should have poverty reduction as a target, but it does not. Instead, it talks about people being “more prosperous”. It could be said that that is just semantics—putting a positive spin on poverty by talking about prosperity instead. However, I am very concerned, as other hon. Members clearly are, that it shows a move away from poverty reduction, tackling inequality, support for the most marginalised and inclusive growth, with a focus instead on macroeconomic prosperity and the hope that it will trickle down. We know that that will not work and that it risks fuelling inequality and instability. It is a move away from achieving the sustainable development goals on the interconnected issues of poverty, inequality, climate change, inclusive societies, access to health and education, and water and sanitation.

Water and sanitation is all but missing from the international development strategy. WASH—water, sanitation and hygiene—is the foundation on which any development strategy should be based. There is a lot of talk in the strategy about trade, but trade cannot increase if farmers cannot water their livestock or crops. Farmers just cannot achieve very much with no water: they face ill health and poor hygiene, or have to fetch water instead of farming and being a trading actor. It is truly frightening that the Government have cut funding for WASH by two thirds between 2018 and 2021.

Water Aid is one of the most popular and well-supported aid agencies in this country. I am not just saying that because I used to work for it; I chose to work for it because I know the importance of water and sanitation. Its popularity demonstrates how obvious it is to British people and to anyone who has travelled to any of the countries we are talking about that without clean water, sanitation and hygiene, we just cannot get the other benefits to progress for girls, for trade, for autonomy and for villages and towns. WASH is a no-regrets solution: it is really good value for money, and it fast-forwards progress in gender equality, global health, climate change and so many other areas.

Let us take gender equality as an example. The focus of the development strategy is quite rightly on women and girls, but without access to WASH, millions of women and girls will miss out on school or the chance to work and will be at greater risk of poor health, violence and abuse. Every day, approximately 800 million women and girls are on their period, yet one third do not have access to clean water, female-friendly and decent toilets, hygiene facilities and sanitary materials to manage menstruation with dignity. I have met many, many girls who miss a week of school a month, and many teachers who despair. They want to do their best, but they cannot.

Women are responsible for about 60% of household water collection needs globally. Achieving universal basic water services would free up more than 77 million working days for women each year between 2021 and 2040. The gains could be huge, so I ask the Minister: what proportion of the reinstated ODA budget for women and girls will go to programmes addressing period poverty and shame? Given its importance to the education, economic empowerment and safety of women and girls globally, will the Minister restore the UK’s ODA funding for WASH?

Global health and WASH are inseparable too. The World Health Organisation estimates that one newborn baby dies every minute from infections related to a lack of clean water and hygiene. This is such a basic problem, so heartbreaking and so easily solved. More than half the healthcare centres in the world’s 46 least developed countries lack clean water or decent toilets, which is causing preventable deaths and accelerating the spread of antimicrobial resistance as health workers are forced to use antibiotics in lieu of good hygiene. If any of our local hospitals had no running water, they would close—they would not be open—but that is the situation of half the healthcare facilities in the world’s poorest countries. The Lancet estimates that 1.27 million people died of drug-resistant infections in 2019 alone, a number that will just continue to increase as antimicrobial resistance develops, and that will affect us in this country as well: we are interconnected.

The FCDO’s own analysis in December 2021 rightly recognised the importance of WASH in maternal and child health, pandemic preparedness, and building climate-resilient health systems. However, the FCDO is not putting its money where its mouth is. The financing gap preventing universal access to WASH in healthcare facilities is just $601 million annually to 2030. That is small change for all the G7 nations, working together, and the UK should be leading the way in advocating its provision. I therefore want to hear from the Minister what the Government are doing to increase access to WASH in healthcare facilities in the world’s least developed countries, and whether she agrees that it must be better financed.

I also have a little shopping list of aid programmes which I know are changing, but about which I should like some further information. These are just examples of the problems that will come as a result of the disintegration—the Government seem to be disintegrating around us as we speak, but there is also this disintegration —of what used to be the DFID budget.

The right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) raised an important issue: why are we still funding China to such a great extent, and what are those funds for? As for Sudan, has the peace programme been entirely cut? We built up that programme over many years, and we have been funding it for so long; are there any plans to reinstate it?

In Lebanon, the UK Government had been funding a very successful landmine programme to clear cluster munitions for many years. The Lebanese Government were given a five-year extension allowing them to clear their munitions by 2026, they said they were on track for 2025—and then what happened? We cut the programme. They were so close to achieving landmine eradication. They had come so far, and we had worked so well with them, and the Lebanese military, to achieve that. Farmers could have their land back, they could grow and they could trade, but they cannot achieve any of those goals in the international development strategy without that programme, so why did we cut it?

The next item on my little shopping list is the BBC World Service, the jewel in our crown. We have built up, over so many years, a trusted service. I saw its impact in Kenya, where I was living, during the post-election violence. It was the only source of information then. It is so well trusted across the world. It is a source of huge soft power for us, and I hope to hear from the Minister that it will not be subject to any of the cuts.

The final item is climate finance. On 20 June, the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy said that the BEIS was surrendering climate finance underspend to the Ukraine aid budget. Climate finance underspend is climate finance which has been budgeted for, for which there are plans, which has not been spent yet, but which will be spent on very important climate projects. I do not begrudge any aid going to Ukraine, but I do want to know where the money is coming from. If we are just robbing Peter to pay Paul, what is the point of this strategy? It is not very strategic at all.

A development strategy that does not prioritise poverty reduction, conflict and genocide prevention, and WASH is not one that the British people would want to support. It breaks our promises to the world’s most vulnerable people, and it further weakens our standing on the world stage.

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[Vicky Ford]

I will make some more progress, because I want to answer many other questions.

Major global challenges are threatening the progress made over previous years. We had seen progress, especially in the last decade, but that has reversed in the last two years, which is partly to do with covid and partly to do with climate change. In that context, it is really important that our international development strategy provides a clear framework to enable people and countries to take control of the future.

Yes, a priority of the strategy is to deliver reliable investments through British investment partnerships, building on the UK’s financial expertise and the strength of the City of London. That is a way in which we can help, using Government—taxpayers’— money to bring more money into developing countries. That must be done in a way that also delivers on green priorities and supports countries to grow their economies sustainably. A key aspect of that is helping countries with the lowest incomes to build their trade capacity and infrastructure. That is not about putting all of our funding in the trade basket; it is about looking at ways in which we can harness investment to make a real difference for countries.

For example, I was in Sierra Leone earlier this year—I have visited 14 African countries since I took on this role, and Sierra Leone is one of those that most needs international development assistance—and one project that I saw was a solar microgrid. We have 95 of them going up across the country, and they are helping more than 300,000 people to get access to electricity. That means that kids can do their school work in the evening, that a sole trader can run her business and get herself an income and livelihood and, most importantly, that local services can get access to electricity. In the same town, I visited the women’s health clinic that we helped set up, where we have worked on training for those delivering babies and on bringing in oxygen services, blood bank services and electricity. That has reduced maternal deaths from one in 25—one in 25 women having a baby was dying—to one in 250. Putting infrastructure investment into that microgrid enabled the oxygen services and blood to be kept in the fridge. That helped to save lives and meant that lights were on when women were delivering their babies at night. As all of us who are mothers know, many women choose to have their babies at night—I have gone slightly off my speech.

Another priority is to empower women and girls. We want to tackle the social, economic and political structural barriers that hold them back, and unlock their potential. Indeed, restoring the funding for women and girls has been a key priority for the Foreign Secretary. I cannot put back the money that was not restored last year, so, in answer to the hon. Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson), the funding is being restored going forward, and it does include areas such as sexual and reproductive health and rights. I believe that that is absolutely central to women’s and girls’ fundamental right to have control over their lives and bodies.

[Sarah Champion]

Can the Minister confirm whether that will also include safe abortions?

[Vicky Ford]

Yes, the Chair of the International Development Committee is right. There are countries where part of our support is access to safe abortions. That is a vital part of the UK’s support.

The whole of the women and girls strategy is centred around three different areas, which we call the three E’s: education, empowerment and ending violence. As the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill) said, they all need to work together to support women. That will be set out in the forthcoming women and girls strategy.

Why do we not mention boys’ education and always mention girls? It is because girls often face extra barriers to get into school. When we can remove the barriers for the girls, we help the boys as well.

Our third priority is to step up our humanitarian work to prevent the worst forms of human suffering. We are prioritising £3 billion for that over the next three years. We are also leading globally in driving a more effective international response to crises. I mentioned earlier what we have done on leveraging other donors to come and help us in the horn of Africa. We continue to support humanitarian multilateral aid agencies through core contributions to them. That funding enables the humanitarian system to undertake essential work in providing humanitarian assistance to those most in need.

Another vital priority is to take forward our work on climate change, nature and global health, putting the commitments of our G7 and COP26 presidencies, and our global leadership in science and technology, at the core of our offer. On climate, we are delivering more than £1 billion of activities this year as part of our flagship five-year, £11.6 billion international climate finance target. Another event I went to earlier this year was the annual general meeting of the African Development Bank, where the UK signed the landmark guarantee with the bank that will enable it to unlock $2 billion of funding. No other country is stepping up in this way. That funding will be able to go directly into parts of Africa to help to build climate resilience and is the sort of innovative way we are using our financial powers to get support to the poorest parts of the world.

On covid, I remind the Select Committee Chair that we were at the forefront of the international response to covid-19. We pledged up to £1.2 billion to address the impacts of the pandemic.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Champion]

I want to begin by thanking all the aid workers around the world, who work in some incredibly dangerous and challenging situations. They do it quietly; they do it because they care about people and want to make a difference.

I also thank all hon. Members who have spoken in the debate. I hope that the Minister has listened to the words of former DFID Ministers, former Treasury Ministers and former aid workers with a wealth of experience. This is all about meeting our international obligations to the most vulnerable and the poorest in the world, not in a political way but in a cross-party way, because we care about this. Why do we care? Because in the past two years, another 100 million people have been forced into extreme poverty—by covid, by climate change, by conflict. The majority have been women and girls. All the issues could have been addressed if we had worked internationally with our partners and used our money wisely.

When we talk about the commitment to 0.7%, it is not about the number. It is about the strategy to alleviate poverty around the world and develop low and middle-income countries around the world so that everybody can have a healthy, prosperous, educated future with Governments who are stable and respect human rights. We can achieve that by working together and by working with our partners on the ground.

I urge the Minister to listen to everything that has been said today; to make sure that the taxpayers’ money that the Government have been gifted to look after is spent as wisely as possible so that we can meet our goals and international commitments; and to work with our international partners so that, hopefully, everybody can have a safe future.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

It being 20 seconds before 7 o’clock, I will just talk for 20 seconds and entertain the House, as I am required by Standing Order No. 54 to put the Questions at 7 o’clock. Now we have another five seconds, and who knows what could happen in five seconds in this place today? [Laughter.]