International Development Policies

Viscount Craigavon Excerpts

Thursday 19th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Craigavon (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, for this debate, which has caused me to become particularly aware of the invaluable work of ICAI, the Independent Commission for Aid Impact. I have also benefited in this specialised area, as others may have, from the considerable work done by the Commons International Development Committee, formerly most ably chaired by our newly introduced Peer today, the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Bennachie. It would be too easy just to highlight and borrow from its few criticisms of the department but I should say first that I strongly support the work of DfID, and generally of international development, while being slightly concerned about the strains imposed on its systems in having to meet the 0.7% target.

The recent increases required to meet that target seem to have added enormously to the complexity and unmanageability of the department. I will come in a moment to the excellent work that it has done in the field of my particular interest, which is reproductive health and population. In general, I understand the downside of the overreliance on supporting multilateral organisations, especially when that leads to less support being given to smaller, more specialist suppliers, which are able to be more flexible, focused and adaptable. I support ICAI in a comment from its recent report that the department should be trying to achieve,

“positive, long-term, transformative change for poor people, who are the intended beneficiaries of UK aid”.

That leads to emphasising the longer-term aspect of aid, which will also produce sustainable results.

My particular interest in reproductive health and population is an example of just such longer-term and sustainable aims. The department has given strong support to the inclusion of sexual and reproductive health and rights—SRHR—throughout the 2015 negotiations on sustainable development goals. The two targets mentioning SRHR and services have been a major achievement for the persistence of the department. Given the UK’s global leadership and technical expertise in promoting and supporting SRHR, I hope DfID will continue to prioritise these critical and often marginalised subjects.

Improvement of health services generally in developing countries also needs support to those services. The International Development Committee’s assessment of the department’s performance in 2013-14 concludes:

“We are concerned by the reduction in spending in some areas vital to achieving key MDGs such as reproductive health and recommend that DFID significantly increase spending in this area”.

In a legacy report, it also recommends that work and spending in this important area be significantly increased, and urges its successor committee to press DfID on the issue.

The summary of the committee’s initial report states that,

“spending by DFID’s priority country teams has declined relatively, as has spending on programmes in sub-Saharan Africa and on key MDG targets such as reproductive health … We recommend that DFID increase the share of expenditure going to bilateral programmes, to sub-Saharan Africa and significantly increase spending on reproductive health”.

Mention of sub-Saharan Africa brings to mind the reports last year endorsed by the United Nations Population Fund, which stated that that part of the world is most likely to be the last to stabilise its population. Its growth is largely because birth rates in sub-Saharan Africa have not been decreasing as fast as expected. It is just that area where aid money is being reduced, and the concern is that aid allocation is increasingly being driven elsewhere by UK economic concerns at the expense of meeting the unmet need for reproductive services, as well as of delivering long-term poverty reduction and development. I hope that the department will continue to take the lead in highlighting this priority area.