Covid-19: International Response

Viscount Chandos Excerpts

Monday 18th May 2020 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Chandos (Lab)]

I join other noble Lords in welcoming the Government’s embrace of multilateralism in their response to the Covid-19 crisis, when they have too often appeared in other respects enthusiasts for British or even English exceptionalism.

The Government’s significant and early commitment to emergency funding, to be channelled through the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations with its commitment to equality of access, was particularly welcome. However, it is wrong to attribute this, as the Secretary of State for the Department for International Development did in her Statement to the House of Commons 12 days ago, to the altruism of the British people. It is not altruism that lies behind investment in the accelerated development of Covid-19 vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics but overwhelming economic and social self-interest. As the Minister said in her opening remarks, the virus does not respect national borders. This investment should not be at the expense of the other international aid programmes financed by DfID, when, as many noble Lords have highlighted this evening, the social and economic needs of low-income countries have already been increased so much and, I fear, will increase even more if Covid-19 explodes in those countries, as the hotspots in Nigeria threaten.

I therefore have three questions for the Minister. First, how much of the £388 million committed by the Government under the coronavirus global response has been, or will be, taken from the international aid budget and the 0.7% of GNI obligation under the International Development Act? Secondly, is the £84 million grant to Oxford and Imperial, announced last week, an addition to the CGR commitment and will it come from outside DfID’s budget? Lastly, in the current year, when the OBR is forecasting a 12.8% fall in GDP which will be reflected in a similar fall in GNI, will the Government not just protect the 0.7% international aid obligation, as my noble friend Lady Goudie has asked, but increase it in percentage terms, at least maintained in absolute terms, without counting any spending under the CGR commitment?