International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill

Stephen Doughty Excerpts

Friday 12th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a privilege to speak in the debate, following so many distinguished and committed speakers. I add my tributes to the right hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (Michael Moore), not only for introducing the Bill, but because he has long been a passionate campaigner committed to these issues, as I have seen over many years, both when I worked as a campaigner and in this House.

As many Members will be aware, I have had the privilege of working on these issues for many years with agencies that are in receipt of our aid and support, whether it was Oxfam or World Vision. I also had the deep privilege to work at the Department for International Development. As many Members have said, including the right hon. Member for Gordon (Sir Malcolm Bruce), DFID—the staff and all who work there, and indeed Ministers from all parties who have served there—is an absolute credit to the country.

I also pay tribute to the last Labour Government. I was lucky to work in a team that drafted an earlier version of this Bill and started some of this debate. That is why it is great to see the consensus in much of the House today that we should put this matter to bed—that we should put this commitment down in law and that it should ultimately be a matter that goes beyond party politics, to show what Britain is about in the world and what we intend to do. I also add my tribute to all the campaigners who have spoken with so many of us, not only in the last weeks but over so many years, making clear the passion for this issue across the country, and to all those who save lives today. I pay tribute to their campaigning work, their influence and their effort.

I want to go back almost a decade, to 2005, to two instances in my experience of campaigning and working on these issues. The first was from a visit I paid to Malawi with World Vision, which I was working with at the time. If anything has stuck with me over these years, it is the experiences I had on that visit, which show why what we do on this issue is so crucial. I travelled to areas that were suffering the worst effects of a serious drought and water shortage, with food shortages apparent in the south of the country. I saw the contrast between the leafy plantations producing tobacco, tea and other products, and the people living in absolute squalor and poverty a few miles down the road, queuing for sacks of rice and grain from World Food Programme feeding stations, which were working with World Vision, with support from the UK Government. That contrast—between the absolute rich at the one end and the privileges we enjoy in this country, and the people, many of them suffering diseases, including HIV/AIDS, queuing up for food in the hot sun—has stuck with me for the rest of my life.

[Mrs Spelman]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the significance of the UK aid programme to Malawi is demonstrated by the fact that there has not been another famine there since it began? Sacks of grain were given, particularly to women in the community, in return for the construction of roads, so that lives could be saved by shorter journey times to hospitals. That is a prime example of making that country more sustainable through aid.

[Stephen Doughty]

I wholeheartedly agree. As many Members will be aware, Malawi has gone through many challenges since then, but that is a story of success and, indeed, there are many other success stories as a result of the support from aid.

Also that summer I spent a number of days and months in the fine city of Edinburgh in advance of the Gleneagles summit, and I was privileged to march with, and stand alongside, 250,000 people from all over this country—including many from across Scotland—who took advantage of that unique opportunity and our role in the G8 and on the world stage to put the pressure on to do the things that my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) talked about, and to cancel that debt, to treble the aid, and to argue for fairer trade rules. That shows how passionate people up and down this country are about this issue, despite the siren voices we hear from the other end of the spectrum of opinion. There were people from churches, from mosques, from all faiths and none, and from communities up and down this country. The rich and the poor and young families marched alongside each other, making clear that no matter what challenges we face in this country—and we face many—they want to stand alongside those who live in abject poverty and injustice in this world. I shall return to that point.

There are two fundamental arguments, and many Members have touched on them. The first is our moral duty. I have always fervently believed this, influenced by my own faith and upbringing, and I know many Members share that view. It is based on the idea that the character of poverty is similar wherever we see it, whether in this country or abroad. Obviously, it is experienced in extreme forms in a number of the countries we have been talking about, and there is the same lack of hope, of aspiration and of opportunity. Ultimately, we are all born equal, but unfortunately some of us do not have the opportunities that others have, and I believe we fundamentally have a duty to serve those who have less than we do.

The other argument that has always been absolutely clear to me is that this is in our common interest. It is clearly in our national interest, but it is in our common interest, too, to care about these matters. I spoke in my very first speech in this House about the impact of conflict, instability and poverty on communities in my own constituency—the links of many people from places such as Somalia, Somaliland, Yemen, Pakistan and Bangladesh, and the concern they have for their fellow brothers and sisters in the countries from where their families originally came—but also the impact that poverty and instability in a number of those countries is having on our own streets. Poverty, injustice and oppression go hand in hand with conflict and instability, and we must act. We must give a solid commitment in this House and stop this zero-sum game of trying to separate off defence, diplomacy and development and what we do in our own country. We try to separate them all off from each other, rather than look at them as a holistic whole, and in doing so we are making a huge mistake.

[Mr Nuttall]

Does the hon. Gentleman not agree that the passage of this Bill will not result in a single extra pound being spent on this country’s international aid budget?

[Stephen Doughty]

If the economy grows, it will do, of course. The crucial thing is that we are tying this to the state of our overall economy, but it is also setting a worldwide standard, and it is meeting a promise we made in the 1970s, and which, indeed, all parties in this House committed to.

We could give many examples. The right hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman) mentioned one from Malawi, and I have seen for myself the impact of effective aid led by the expertise in DFID, whether in Sierra Leone in tackling maternal mortality and the deaths of young children, and the impact we were able to make with a very small contribution and removing user fees for basic health care services; in our action to tackle malaria, on which the right hon. Member for Eddisbury (Mr O'Brien) did excellent work in his time as Minister in the Department; or through the education programmes we have funded, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, the former Prime Minister, spoke about. There is also our work on HIV and AIDS, which I know many Members are very passionate about, and, indeed, our humanitarian work.

It was also a privilege to be able to serve alongside people from DFID, the Ministry of Defence, the Royal Fleet Auxiliary Service and the Foreign Office, who worked on our response to the terrible Haiti earthquake many years ago. Disasters such as Haiti demonstrate exactly what is at stake. In addition to providing the immediate humanitarian response, we also need to address the underlying causes of vulnerability in those situations. That requires long-term, predictable and assured assistance from countries such as ours.

The argument about predictability has been put forward a number of times. Members have asked why we need the Bill, and why we need to firm up this commitment and put it into law. The reason is that the predictable assurance of effective aid in the long term creates an ability to move away from aid. If we can support countries in building up strong health and education systems and good governance, we will ultimately be able to move them away from needing development assistance.

This activity also helps to create a social contract in countries where people should be able to expect services such as health and education to be provided by their Government. Our assistance can get them over that hump. That is what happened in this country. Let us not forget that, many years ago, health care and education services were provided voluntarily, as charity, here before we moved to nationally funded systems. We can have a debate about how those systems should be handled in the future, but we have moved to those national systems with national standards and predictable, secure funding. That creates an expectation among the population and helps to further democracy and the overall quality of life in a country. We should never forget that. This is a fundamental point to be made to those who ask why we need this commitment.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that another important consequence of predictable funding is that, through DFID, we are able to support long-term programmes of research, particularly agricultural research and health research into much needed vaccines and medicines? Does he agree that those are global public goods?

[Stephen Doughty]

I thoroughly agree with the hon. Gentleman. I have seen many of those programmes at work, and we should pay tribute to those in DFID who work on them. DFID is a world leader in research on many of these issues, and we need to see long-term funding going into those programmes to enable us to come up with solutions for agriculture, for vaccinations and for other crucial areas. In the end, such solutions will remove the need for further support. We need the assurance for that funding, however, because if it is simply left to the whims and the day-to-day politics of this place and of other countries around the world, it could easily fall victim to the siren voices, which would ultimately do long-term damage as we would not be able to achieve the scale and effectiveness that we require.

Many right hon. and hon. Members have mentioned the importance of Scotland. It is exemplified by the fact that the Bill is being promoted by the right hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk and by the presence today of the Chairman of the Select Committee, the right hon. Member for Gordon. We must remember the impact that Scotland has had on these debates, not only here in the House but globally. I mentioned the impact of the Make Poverty History march in Scotland before the Gleneagles summit. That summit would not have taken place there if Scotland had not been part of the United Kingdom. The people of Scotland who feel passionately about these issues would not have been able to have that impact on cancelling debt, trebling aid and arguing for fairer trade rules had that summit not taken place in Scotland and had we not had leaders including our Prime Minister and Chancellor who were willing to stand up for those issues and respond to those campaigners.

Some of the most excellent DFID staff are to be found in Scotland, in East Kilbride. I have had the pleasure of visiting their offices. The right hon. Member for Gordon and my right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr Clarke) have rightly said that it would be a huge tragedy to lose them. In response to the hon. Member for Angus (Mr Weir), I would say that, yes, Scotland could have an aid programme—it already gives support to Malawi and other countries, and that is fantastic—but effective aid depends on scale. It depends on doing things together and working with institutions such as the European Union and the United Nations and with successful, long-established development agencies such as DFID. Breaking that up in order to set up a separate scheme and badge it in a different way would be foolish. It would be a sad ending for the hundreds of thousands of people who stood on the streets of Edinburgh in 2005.

The Bill is about investing in the future of some of the world’s poorest people. It is also about investing in our own common future. This is the right thing to do. It is about justice, not charity. It is about putting Britain on the world stage and doing the right thing.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right.

[Stephen Doughty]

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

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

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

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

No, I will not.

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

[Stephen Doughty]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Philip Davies]

No, I will not.

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

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

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Doughty]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Philip Davies]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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