Foreign Aid Expenditure

Stephen Doughty Excerpts

Monday 13th June 2016 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton), a fellow member of the International Development Committee, and I agree with many of her points. It is important for Members to understand the reason why we are here today, which is not only the petition but the fact that it was started by The Mail on Sunday, which said when talking about our aid budget:

“Rather than helping people who desperately need it, much of this money is wasted and…fuels corruption, funds despots and corrodes democracy in developing nations.”

Quite frankly, that is lazy and wrong, and it is irresponsible for anyone who cares about our national security and global security—

[Mrs Main]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way on that point?

[Stephen Doughty]

I will give way in a moment, but let me make a few points. It is important to note that there is both a moral argument and a practical and national security argument for why we should spend 0.7% on aid. The moral argument should shame us all. As a Christian, I think it is appalling that 800 women die every day in childbirth and 20,000 children die every day from preventable diseases. We can list the statistics, which should shame us all. It is irresponsible for us to ignore those in a world where poverty, insecurity and instability have consequences for our streets and our cities.

Gross poverty has fuelled instability in Yemen. There are ungoverned spaces there where militants can train and extremism can flourish. The Mail on Sunday is quite happy to tell us about the immigrants flooding towards us—it was happy to put that on its front page instead of the massacre in Orlando—but what it does not tell us is that many of those people trying to find a better future are fleeing because of the very poverty and insecurity that our aid aims to tackle. Do we seriously think that diseases such as Ebola and other pandemics, and the HIV/AIDS epidemic, resist borders? Of course they do not. Our aid plays a crucial role in tackling such diseases.

[Mrs Main]

The hon. Gentleman said that there is nothing in the corruption point. If he reads the ICAI report on anti-corruption and DFID, he will see that it is on red-amber, showing that there are serious concerns about our 0.7% budget being used corruptly in some areas.

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[Stephen Doughty]

I will come on to that point directly. It is absolutely right that any allegations of corruption or aid money being used by terrorist organisations, or any other allegations of that nature, are robustly and efficiently investigated. I have every confidence that DFID will do that. Indeed, we have the Independent Committee for Aid Impact, which the hon. Lady mentioned, which is investigating those very issues. I am convinced that we have one of the most robust regimes in the world, and it has been regarded as such by many other Governments.

The fact is that there is a paradox. If we operate in risky environments, some things will not work out. We would not say to a small business, “Don’t use your capital, because something might go wrong and you might lose some of it.” We would not say to our troops, “Don’t go in and fight that battle, because something might go wrong.” We should not say, “Let’s not give aid in risky environments, because something might go wrong with it.” On balance, we are far better off being in there trying to deal with the root problems and consequences than not engaging at all and pulling up the boundaries and saying, “None of this matters and none of it affects us.”

The fact is that corruption thrives in poverty and insecurity. We have withdrawn our aid from countries where there has been absolutely categorical evidence of it being used inappropriately. When I worked in Government at the Department for International Development, we removed aid from the Malawian Government when they said that they were going to spend it on a jet. We have never given money directly to many aspects of the Government of Zimbabwe because of concerns about that—we give aid through charities instead. To say the aid is all going to despots is completely wrong.

[Ian Austin]

I agree with much of what my hon. Friend is saying, but I just want him to understand that those of us who are concerned about the Palestinian Authority’s support for terrorists are not saying that we should withdraw, walk away and leave them to it—not at all. We are saying that perhaps some of that money would be better spent supporting projects that work across both communities, with Palestinians and Israelis, building dialogue and putting in place the building blocks of the peace process that we all want to see.

[Stephen Doughty]

The point I am making is a wide one. It is right to look carefully into any allegations of such a serious nature—and several have been raised today. I listened to what the Minister said about specific cases, but that is not the point I am making. I am speaking generally, with reference to the impression created by The Mail on Sunday petition. The fact is that the countries that our aid supports have been regularly reviewed. The coalition Government made different choices about which countries to support from the Labour Government that I was part of; but that was right—we should review those things. We have stopped giving aid to India, and places such as China—it was a difficult decision but I think it was the right one—yet a myth is perpetuated that we are still giving them money.

As has been said, there is increased independent oversight from the Independent Commission for Aid Impact, which, incidentally, reports to the International Development Committee, not the Government. That means there can be independent scrutiny of what our aid is being spent on . Things have also moved on in the sense that cross-Government co-operation has increased. I welcome the steps that have been taken to increase co-operation between defence, diplomatic and development activities, through the National Security Council. It is the right decision, and it ensures that we are co-ordinated across our international sphere. It is not a zero-sum game. I firmly support the 2% spending target for defence, but I also support the 0.7% aid target. I am in favour of supporting charities and those tackling poverty in my constituency, such as food banks, but I also support providing life-saving drugs to people dying from Ebola or HIV across the world. That is not a zero-sum game—we can do both. Indeed, if I want to ask why people in my constituency are living in poverty, I will have far more questions for the Government about some of their other policies than about what the international aid budget is being spent on.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

Does the hon. Gentleman share my concern about the Government’s increasing tendency to double-count spending both to the 2% NATO target and the 0.7% GNI target?

[Stephen Doughty]

I think there is a danger of things sometimes being blurred, but there are activities that can legitimately be described as measures contributing to security and to development. It is not a zero-sum game. I saw that in Afghanistan. I saw the close working between our development staff, armed forces and Foreign Office staff—there is overlap, but we need to be cautious about completely skewing things in one or the other. As to proportions, the fact is that in 2014-15 defence spending was 75% of our total international spending. Aid, diplomacy and intelligence made up just 25%. That is a perfectly reasonable balance, and the co-operation that is going on is absolutely right.

The growing chaos in Yemen, parts of the horn of Africa, and north and central Africa, shows exactly the consequences of ignoring gross poverty and instability. Our aid is a tiny investment—less than a penny in the pound. It helps us to tackle threats. It is morally right and it shows us to be a compassionate and progressive global power. In my view it is madness to slash the budget that is focused on tackling those threats to our national and global security that drive people to flee their countries and drown, and that, most importantly, degrade us all.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

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[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) on introducing this important debate.

I emphasise that it is possible passionately to support our commitment to spend 0.7% of GDP on aid and yet feel very strongly about accountability and transparency, as I do. It is not only a question of the accountability and transparency of the Department for International Development, although I appreciate that it is doing a lot of work on that. It is about accountability and transparency in the big non-governmental organisations, which do excellent work but have more to do on transparency, and it is about the accountability and transparency of the UN institutions, which are often the least transparent actors in development.

I feel strongly about accountability and transparency not just on behalf of the Daily Mail readers in Hackney North but because my family and those of many of my constituents come from the global south. I assure Members that people who live in the global south feel as strongly about accountability, transparency, good governance and minimising corruption as any Daily Mail reader. That is the context in which I wish to make my remarks.

We have spoken a lot about aid, but development is not only about aid. It is worth reminding the House that Africa loses $58 billion more in flows out of Africa than it receives in aid. Aid spending is dwarfed by the financial flows out of countries in Africa. Every year, the continent receives around $30 billion in aid, but it loses $192 billion—more than six times as much as it receives in aid—in debt repayments, lost tax revenue, tax transfers, multinational profits and other financial flows.

When we discuss this subject, we should not think that aid is the only instrument of development. Aid is important, and I defend the 0.7% contribution, but there are other important issues for the developing world. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) pointed out, the value of remittances to some countries of the global south are even more important than aid. The value of those remittances is that they go directly to communities, with no top- slicing through bureaucracy. In the event of humanitarian disaster, it is often remittances that get to the affected communities faster than any aid.

As the Labour party spokesperson on international development, I have been privileged to have been able to make a number of visits to all parts of the world in the past few months and see for myself how DFID money is spent. I went to Uganda with the International HIV/AIDS Alliance to see some really impressive projects focused on women and young people with HIV. I went to Ghana with ActionAid, where I saw how important women’s health projects were funded. I have also been to Somaliland, where I saw evidence of the drought that is sweeping across eastern and southern Africa. Anyone who says our money is being thrown away should see, as I saw, the starving peoples who have lost their livelihoods because their livestock has perished. They are dependent on the aid funds that come from overseas.

[Stephen Doughty]

Is not Somaliland a perfect example, because our aid, security support and diplomatic support are working, together with the Government there, to bring peace and stability in a region that is not known for its peace and stability? It is a perfect example of how we are doing things right.

[Ms Abbott]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that Somaliland is an example of how we are doing things right, although we would not see that on the pages of The Mail on Sunday.