Foreign Aid Expenditure

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Monday 13th June 2016 Westminster Hall

[Joan Ryan]

On my hon. Friend’s second point, I have not said that. He just said that, not me. On his first point, I think, as we have said, that tests for aid are very important if there is to be public confidence in where aid goes to. It is important that the aid is suspended subject to an inquiry, which could happen very quickly. I am not in any way against giving aid to Palestinians, as long as it is spent in the right way.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. Does she agree that one of the ways forward in this debate about how DFID aid is spent in Israel and Palestine is for there to be increased spending on people-to-people co-existence policies?

[Joan Ryan]

I absolutely agree. I am not going to take any more interventions, as I want to finish my remarks. My hon. Friend makes a very valuable point.

Repeated warnings have been ignored. Nearly two years ago, for instance, the International Development Committee suggested that there is a real risk that the payment of UK aid to the PA in this fashion simply enables it

“to release alternative funds which allow these payments”

to convicted terrorists “to continue”. That is the very point I am making.

While our aid potentially helps to line the pockets of the men of violence, we are providing pitiable support to the co-existence projects that bring Israelis and Palestinians together, as my hon. Friend has said. I have written to the Secretary of State listing a number of co-existence projects that enable Palestinians and Israelis to work together, demonstrating what they have in common, not what divides them. I have calculated that less than 13% of the £1.14 million from the Government’s conflict, stability and security fund spent in Israel and the Palestinian territories funds co-existence projects. That represents a mere 0.2% of the roughly £72 million that DFID spends in the Palestinian territories.

Britain can and must help to work towards an independent, democratic Palestinian state living alongside an Israel that is safe and secure within recognised borders. At the moment, I fear that our aid to the Palestinian Authority might be taking us further away from that goal, which is why, as I have previously argued, we urgently need an independent inquiry and a radical rethink.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Hodgson]

The hon. Lady is making an excellent speech. On the detractors of the UK aid spend, I wish she could print that list of those great projects in a national newspaper. We need to advertise the great work DFID is doing around the world. We all know about it, but I do not think that the public appreciate it, and nor do they know the details she has highlighted.

[Fiona Bruce]

The hon. Lady makes an excellent point, and I agree with her. The International Development Committee has been urging DFID and Ministers to do that, because she is absolutely right that the public will wholeheartedly support and endorse such schemes.