Foreign Aid Expenditure

Tom Brake Excerpts

Monday 13th June 2016 Westminster Hall

[Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petition 125692 relating to foreign aid spending.

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Wilson. I am pleased to see so many colleagues here to debate this important issue. We find ourselves here today in response to an e-petition started by John Wellington from The Mail on Sunday. I am bound to say that after the events of the past week, The Mail on Sunday is my favourite national newspaper. The e-petition calls for the spending of a fixed 0.7% of the UK’s gross national income on foreign aid to be stopped and instead for money only to be given to

“truly deserving causes, on a case-by-case basis.”

I am delighted to have the opportunity to open this debate as a member of the Petitions Committee, because it is the perfect opportunity to set out the arguments clearly. We know that the UK is a world leader on international development.

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the UK is a world leader because we deliver spending of 0.7% of gross national income on overseas aid?

[Steve Double]

I wholeheartedly agree with the right hon. Gentleman, and I will come on to make that point very soon.

We know that in 2013, we were the only United Nations country to achieve our target on aid spending. We know that our 0.7% spending commitment is enshrined in law. Furthermore, let us not forget that our commitment to overseas aid was a clear part of the 2015 manifesto on which a majority Conservative Government was elected. There are people who feel strongly about this issue and feel that we should not be spending this amount of money on international aid. People are perfectly entitled to hold those views, and that is the beauty and very purpose of the Petitions Committee—it gives the opportunity to debate in the House issues that the public raise.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I am pleased to be serving under your chairmanship, Mr Wilson, and I congratulate the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) on his introductory speech.

I first visited Bangladesh 20 years ago. On that occasion, at a charitable health facility that someone had taken me too, I met a lad probably aged nine or 10, literally dressed in rags. It was explained to me that he was not able to go to school because he had to earn a living and worked at the local hotel. At the time, I think only about one half of primary-age schoolchildren in Bangladesh were in school; today, the equivalent figure is more than 90%. A remarkable transformation has been achieved over the past 20 years. It reflects great credit on Bangladesh, with enrolment among girls at a much increased level, as well as among boys, but British aid has made an important contribution to that change.

In February—I am sure other hon. Members have had similar experiences—in Dhaka I visited a little, one-room school run by that remarkable organisation BRAC, which receives a great deal of support from DFID. I met hopeful, eager and enthusiastic primary schoolchildren, optimistically looking forward to their future, which underlined for me just how important the transformation that British aid has contributed to over the past 20 years is. I have no idea what happened to the boy whom I met 20 years ago—rightly, he might have his own children now, but, if he has, they can expect a much better start in life than he had. Our aid has made an important contribution to bringing that about.

[Tom Brake]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the problems he has seen in Bangladesh are unlikely all to be resolved by 2020? Does he hope, as I do, that all parties in the House will want, in their 2020 manifestos, to maintain the commitment to 0.7% of GNI?

[Stephen Timms]

I would welcome that, as I welcome the broad support across the Chamber for that commitment. It is interesting to reflect on the reasons for that cross-party support for the 0.7% target, which I think go back to the Jubilee 2000 campaign in the run-up to the millennium, and the tremendous public support for Britain being more generous to the poorest countries in the world. That was then renewed and strengthened by the Make Poverty History campaign in 2005—the great rally in Edinburgh addressed by Nelson Mandela, with the summit at Gleneagles, chaired by Tony Blair, whose decisions made an important contribution.