International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill

Viscount Astor Excerpts

Friday 23rd January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Astor (Con)]

My Lords, it is surprising, when one has heard that the Bill has all-party support and was a manifesto commitment, that it is not a government Bill but has been left for the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, to introduce as a Private Member’s Bill at what might only be described as the very end of the parliamentary Session.

I fully support the Government’s intention to keep the aid budget at 0.7%. I would be delighted if economic and financial circumstances in this country allowed that percentage to increase in future, but I am concerned by the way the Bill enshrines the percentage in legislation. Surely that should be a matter of policy rather than law. Future Governments might feel constrained not to increase the percentage because it would require legislation. Equally, in severe economic times, they might be discouraged from lowering it if that was necessary in one particular year. I am nervous of enshrining any percentage of expenditure in legislation. This seems to be one Parliament binding the next, something that we have so far always avoided in legislation. Why the exception in this case? If the aid budget, why not the health service or defence spending? They are all just as important.

The argument has been put forward that we want to encourage other countries to follow suit. That is a laudable aim, but I am not sure that domestic legislation is the right way forward. We should be putting pressure on other members of the EU through the Commission, and other countries through the UN, to increase their development spending.

Then we have the problem of defining exactly what aid is. Is it just money spent by DfID? What about the sums that we send to the EU that is spent by the Commission in its aid budget? Should not that contribution be taken into account? Can the Minister tell us how much we send and how much is spent by the Commission?

Then we have to consider the MoD. It is currently manning hospitals in Sierra Leone, treating Ebola patients. It is vital work; is it not also a form of foreign aid? We should all be very proud of the work that our Armed Forces and health workers are doing in that country, which is not without risk.

If we added all that together—together with the work of the British Council, which the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, mentioned—would that not increase the amount of money that we are spending? We should be championing that.

Then we have the issue that the NAO report raised about year-end spending. We know that the department spent £1 billion in eight weeks to hit the target. Anyone who has spent time in a government department has seen that when that department suddenly finds an underspend, there is always an ugly rush to spend the money. It cannot be given back or rolled over. Projects that have been rejected are revived, or brought out of mothballs. One way that that could be solved for DfID is if it was allowed to roll over spending from one year to another, rather than go through what looks like a panic to spend money before the year’s end. Would that be allowed under Clause 3(3)?

Another issue is that the department’s year end is March, but the OECD year end is calendar. The National Audit Office report says:

“This difference is likely to represent more than an accounting difficulty because of the need to hit a target with little or no flexibility, causing significant decisions to be made late in the year and at short notice”.

The report recommends a three-year rolling average when specifying spending targets. Perhaps the Minister will respond to that suggestion.

In Committee in another place, the Minister, Desmond Swayne, answered that question with the following words:

“I come finally to the question about the difference between the calendar year in which we report overseas development aid and the financial year in which we do all our other business. I confess that that has caused me some angst over recent weeks as it has crossed my desk again and again. If you will excuse my French, Mr Crausby, it is a bugger”.—[Official Report, Commons, International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill Committee, 4/11/14; cols. 26-7.]

I hope that the Minister will today be able to give a less colourful but more explicit answer to that question.

I fully support our aid budget. It helps to control economic migration, it helps countries to develop their infrastructure, it promotes self-sufficiency and, above all, it helps those in dire need. It saves lives. However, I have questions that I hope that the Minister will answer. Anyone listening to the debate today will wonder whether it is just a debate about the benefits of the money we send to countries in need. There is no question about that, but I respectfully suggest that we ought also to consider the detail of the Bill to see whether it achieves its laudable aims.