Official Development Assistance and the British Council

Theresa May Excerpts

Wednesday 30th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Theresa May (Maidenhead) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the very good speech from the Chairman of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), and I echo her comments in thanking FCDO staff and aid workers around the world for the work that they do, often, as she said, in extremely difficult circumstances. I would also like to say to the Minister that I am grateful to Lord Ahmad for the discussions he is having with me on modern slavery and initiatives on modern slavery, and those discussions are continuing.

Before I come to the specific points I want to make on the estimates, I will make a general point on this debate, because I believe that, in response to my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) last week, the Prime Minister implied that this debate was a vote on 0.7%. Of course, it is a vote on the estimates for the FCDO. It cannot be used as a proxy vote on 0.7%, and I hope the Government will accept that and recognise that the calls for a vote on 0.7% are still there.

There are two issues that I particularly want to raise. The first is that, in the limited information available to us on aid spending from the Government, there seems to be little suggestion from the Government that they are actually paying attention to the important linkages between the different elements of spending in the aid budget. This is often an holistic matter, and these things cannot just be looked at in silos.

To give just one example of this, our right hon. Friend the Prime Minister is rightly very keen to encourage girls’ education around the world. It has been a theme of Conservative Governments now for some considerable time. We have taken it up in G7 meetings, and we have encouraged others around the world to take up that theme. Of course, a girl who is educated is less likely to be lured into modern slavery. However, if we cut the programmes for dealing with modern slavery, that girl may not be able to get into education because the slave drivers and the gangs—the criminal gangs—may have got to her first. We have to look at these issues holistically and at the linkages between them.

[Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)]

I hope my right hon. Friend will forgive me for interrupting her, but she is making such an excellent point, and exactly the same argument can be made on tackling gender-based violence. If we want to succeed in getting women through education, then we must tackle gender-based violence. It is a comprehensive package, and that is why we need to be securing the 0.7%.

[Mrs May]

Indeed. My hon. Friend is absolutely correct. I gave just one example, but actually we have to look at aid funding holistically, and look at the linkages between areas and the impact of cuts in one area on another area. There is no evidence, I am afraid, from what I have seen from the Government, that that is what they have done. It does appear that they have just cut in silos. We see, for example, that the Global Fund to End Modern Slavery has an 80% cut in its funding and there is a 25% cut in funding for girls’ education, but these are linked. I urge the Government to look at those links.

I want to note that, in their response to the fourth special report of the Select Committee, in late September —28 September—last year, the Government said:

“The Government’s manifesto made clear that we would proudly maintain our commitment to spending 0.7 percent of our national income on development—a commitment enshrined in law and one to which the new Department will honour its responsibilities. The Integrated Review, which will inform the priorities and direction for this new department, will set an ambitious vision for the future of the UK as an active, internationalist, problem-solving and burden-sharing nation. Investing 0.7 percent of Gross National Income…on international development is at the heart of that vision; it shows we are an enterprising, outward-looking and truly global Britain that is fully engaged with the world.”

That was at the end of September 2020, and in November 2020 the funding was cut. Either one hand does not know what the other hand is doing in the Government, or they were just trying to calm everybody into a sense that everything was going to be okay before they actually wielded the knife on this particular issue.

The second point I want to make is about the impact on the UK’s presence on the world stage of the decisions that have been taken. This relates not just to ODA spending, but to the spending of the FCDO in general. I note that the Select Committee, in response to the decision to merge DFID into the FCO, said that it had

“significant concerns that the merger may jeopardise the ongoing effectiveness of future UK aid spending… In the long run, the creation of the new Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office could reduce the UK’s clout on the world stage.”

I fear that it is reducing the UK’s clout on the world stage, and this cut in overseas aid is but one example of that, although we focus, as we have in previous debates on this issue, on the very real impact on the ground of the money being cut from different programmes. The health programme has been mentioned by the Select Committee Chairman, the hon. Member for Rotherham, but there are others, including the cut in funding to starving people in Yemen, for example, and all of these are having a real impact on the ground.

The FCDO also needs to look very carefully at the DFID expertise that is now within the FCDO. As it looks across its estimates and at how it is spending its money in the Department, it needs to make very certain that it does not lose that expertise. There have been times in the past when people have rightly questioned the way in which our aid money has been spent, but I have to say that that has changed in recent years, largely due to and initiated by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield when he was the International Development Secretary. We spend our aid differently, and we have developed—and successive International Development Secretaries did this too—real expertise. We are now hitting the needy across the world with a double whammy because they are losing our funding and they are losing our expertise as well.

[Mr Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend realise that the position is far worse than was set out when the so-called merger took place? What has happened is that DFID has been completely dismantled. Even in the days of her predecessor, Lady Thatcher, there was an overseas development administration within the Foreign Office, which was a sort-of department for development with a Minister of State in charge of it. There is nothing like that today. The whole thing has been completely smashed to pieces, as she is saying in her speech.

[Mrs May]

I thank my right hon. Friend for clarifying that point so well. If we are going to continue to be respected as a country that leads on overseas aid, it is absolutely imperative that we not only spend the money, but that we also have the expertise to ensure that it is being spent properly. Hosting receptions in the British embassy, and getting to know local businessmen and politicians, is a different skillset to knowing how to deliver aid on the ground logistically, so that British taxpayers’ money is spent in the most effective way.

Maintaining that expertise is particularly important if the Government are to be believed, as we hope they are, when they say that they are going to restore the 0.7%. When a programme is cut, we cannot just say, “Well, you are not having that money this year, but next year you are going to have it.” People will no longer be employed to give the aid on the ground. We need the expertise to be able to build the programmes up. We are looking at a perfect storm, where not only has the money gone away but, when the time comes—I hope it will be next year that the Government restore 0.7%—we will find that the people are not in the Department to ensure that that is being done, and being done effectively.

I say to the Minister that I sincerely hope that we can restore the respect that we have had around the world, through our funding and our expertise, restore the 0.7%, look holistically at the aid spending and not lose DFID expertise. If we do that, we might be able to return, as was said in the Government response to the fourth special report, to being

“an enterprising, outward-looking and truly global Britain that is fully engaged with the world.”

Sadly, at the moment, the message is rather different.