The Secretary of State for International Development (Mr Andrew Mitchell)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the matter of global poverty.
This is the first opportunity since the general election that the House has had to debate international development and my first chance, as Secretary of State, to set out for the House how the coalition will address this vital agenda. My purpose today is twofold. First, I want to set out for the House the changes that we are making in my Department. Secondly, in the context of last week’s Budget, in which the Chancellor set out the scale of the fiscal crisis bequeathed us by the previous Government—a crisis that means that of every £4 of public expenditure, £1 is borrowed—I want to make it clear why our coalition Government stand four-square behind our commitment to the world’s poorest people, and why we will increase our expenditure on international development to 0.7% of our gross national income from 2013, define that expenditure under the OECD/Development Assistance Committee rules and enshrine that commitment in law.
In his Budget, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor reaffirmed that development spending will increase. As the Prime Minister has consistently made clear, the coalition Government will not seek to balance the books on the backs of the poorest in the world. It is clearly helpful that that strong commitment transcends party politics, both in the House and in the country. It is a strength of international development that it is seen not as the preserve or the passion of any one political party, but as a British commitment in which Members in all parts of the House strongly believe.
In that context I would like to say how pleased I was to see that the right hon. Member for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce) has been elected—unopposed—to resume his chairmanship of the Select Committee on International Development. I am also pleased that many hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry), who have a long record of particular involvement and commitment in this area are in their places.
I should also like to express my admiration and respect for the extraordinary collection of skills and expertise in the Department for International Development, which I now have the privilege to lead. As the Prime Minister said on his visit to the Department last week, we should be very proud of the leading role DFID is taking in the fight against international poverty. The fact that in this time of great economic difficulty DFID has a ring-fenced, protected budget is not because we believe that money alone is the key to international development.
Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) (LD)
I welcome the right hon. Gentleman to his position as Secretary of State. He said that he hoped to enshrine in law the commitment that all parties in the House share. Can he give any more information on how and when that might happen?
Mr Mitchell
I thank my right hon. Friend for his comment. I am not able today to give final details, but negotiations continue in the usual manner. I shall make sure that the House is informed as soon as final decisions on that point have been made.
We understand that one of the main causes of sustained poverty is conflict—that it is conflict that so often condemns women and children to grievous suffering. If someone is living in one of those dreadful camps, which hon. Members may have visited, around the world—the Prime Minister and I visited some in Darfur—it does not matter how much access to money, aid, trade or different articles of development they may have, because for as long as the conflict continues, they will remain poor, frightened, dispossessed and angry. Just as conflict condemns people to remain in poverty, so it is wealth creation—jobs, enterprise, trade and engagement with the private sector—that enables people to lift themselves out of poverty. All that underlines, again and again, as the Prime Minister did at the G20 last weekend, the importance of not giving up on the Doha round and, notwithstanding how difficult it is, remaining absolutely committed to it.
Making progress in the fight against international poverty and achieving the goals set down by the whole international community and enshrined in the eight millennium development goals cannot be done without meeting the financial commitments set out so clearly at Gleneagles in 2005—commitments that were underlined and strongly endorsed by the Prime Minister in Canada at the weekend. Although the British Government focused particularly at the G8 summit on MDG 5 on maternal mortality, the most off-track of all the MDGs, we are also leading the argument for real progress to be made on all the goals.
When the UN summit meets in September in New York, there will be just five years left for those goals to be achieved. We want to see measurable outcomes and a clear agenda for action agreed for the whole international community to ensure that the goals are now reached. In essence, we are trying to ensure that good, basic health care, education, clean water and sanitation reach the people at the end of the track, who today in all too many places in the world have none of those things.
Well spent aid has achieved miracles around the world. That is not of course to argue that aid is not sometimes stolen, embezzled or badly used. We will confront all three of those things head-on, but thanks to aid we have eradicated smallpox; we have reduced polio from 350,000 cases a year in 1998 to under 2,000 today; while the number of people on life-saving treatments for AIDS has increased from 400,000 in 2003 to 4 million in 2008. In Afghanistan, there are today 2 million girls in school thanks to the international aid effort.
Chris Kelly (Dudley South) (Con)
In a recent article in a major newspaper the Secretary of State was singled out for particular praise by Bill Gates. Can my right hon. Friend inform the House how he plans to work closely with Mr Gates’s foundation in the coming years?
Mr Mitchell
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. The Gates Foundation has had a profound effect on the way we see and act in international development. Our contacts with the foundation, already significant, are certainly set to intensify.
Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)
I welcome the right hon. Gentleman to his post. He has said a lot about aid, and clearly the role of his Department is hugely important in these matters. Does he accept, however, that in relation to developing countries, what goes on across Whitehall is hugely important? I hope he will also talk about his relationships with the Ministry of Defence, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and those Departments responsible for matters that have an impact on poor people.
Mr Mitchell
The right hon. Gentleman makes an extremely good point, and I hope to come to all those matters during my remarks.
Mr Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)
May I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend in his role and ask him a question about civil justice? In many areas the problem of policing and ensuring that people can obtain justice is one of the most difficult and intractable. Is he bearing that in mind in his duties, particularly in the context of Afghanistan?
Mr Mitchell
I thank my hon. Friend for that comment. Yes, the issue of grievance procedures—how one resolves grievances—is of particular concern in Afghanistan, and we are looking precisely at that in conjunction with other important matters in the run-up to the Kabul conference.
Our determination and commitment to tackling these problems ever more effectively is both a moral matter and one that is very much in our national self-interest. I believe that in a hundred years’ time generations that follow will look back on us in very much the same way that today we look back on the slave trade. They will marvel that our generations acquiesced in a world where each and every day almost 25,000 children under five die needlessly from diseases and conditions that we absolutely have the power to prevent. For the first time, not least through the benefits of globalisation, our generations have the power and ability to make huge progress in tackling these colossal discrepancies in opportunity and wealth around the world.
Many Members will have their own direct experience of what I am describing. In my case, I think of a visit to a remote corner of Uganda with the Medical Missionaries of Mary, who work with families of AIDS orphans. I remind the House that there are more AIDS orphans in sub-Saharan Africa than there are children in the whole of the United Kingdom. I think of the family of six orphaned children I met, of whom the eldest, at 14—the same age as my own daughter at the time—battled each and every day to get her siblings dressed and to school. I remind the House that today Britain is educating 4.8 million primary schoolchildren in Britain, while at the same time in the poor world we are educating 5 million children at a fraction of the cost; in fact, 2.5% of the UK cost.
It is those harsh realities of life in large parts of the world—grinding poverty, hopelessness and destitution—that have galvanised the commitment and passion of so many in our country today to ensure that, in our time, through our generations, we will make a difference. It is true that charity begins at home, but it does not end there.
Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)
I welcome the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues to their places and wish them well during their tenure. In respect of personal experience, my wife and I were able to benefit from a VSO placement in Bangladesh. The VSO placement scheme for parliamentary colleagues has been running for a couple of years, but will his Department continue to support it? It offers parliamentary colleagues an opportunity for short placements of two to four weeks during the summer recess in order to visit some of the countries that DFID supports, and to learn much more about its work.
Mr Mitchell
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I cannot give him that guarantee today, but I am familiar with the scheme he describes. It is an excellent scheme, and we have no plans to alter it at this time, but I shall write to him, giving him specific details, when we have made a decision.
What is less easily articulated is that tackling poverty throughout the world is also very much in our national interest. Whether the issue is drug-resistant diseases, economic stability, conflict and insecurity, climate change or migration, it is far more effective to tackle the root cause now than to treat the symptoms later. The weight of migration to Europe from Africa is often caused by conflict, poverty, disease and dysfunctional government. We see people putting themselves into the hands of the modern equivalent of the slave trader and crossing hundreds of miles of ocean in leaky boats in the hope of tipping up on a wealthy European shore. Often, they are not people seeking a free ride, but the brightest and the best from conflict countries, seeking a better life for themselves and their families. It is much better to help them to tackle the causes of their leaving the country that they have come from. Our prosperity depends on development and growth in Africa and Asia.
Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)
I welcome the Secretary of State to his new position, and I know that he understands the close relationship between development and the environment. Will he add to the list of the issues that he has just mentioned the importance of ensuring that environmental issues are taken into account as part of the development process? Will he also commit to ensuring that, on the climate change promise that the previous Government made, there will be no more than a 10% overlap between environmental projects to combat climate change and development aid—that his Government, too, are willing to continue with that commitment?
Mr Mitchell
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his remarks. On his general point, he is absolutely right about the importance of including in all our aid and development activity a climate-smart approach—one that, as he says, reflects the importance of the environment. In opposition I had an opportunity to see the direct correlation between those issues in many different parts of the world, and, although I shall not speak extensively today about climate change, I very much hope that there will be another opportunity to do so, and I take his point on board.
In respect of the figure of 10%, the hon. Gentleman will have to wait for the result of the spending review, but as he will know, the “fast start” money, which the previous Government announced and we support, will all come out of that 10% and out of the official development assistance budget. We have confirmed that that will happen under our Government, too.
I deal now with the changes that we are making in my Department, and the plans that we set out in the coalition agreement. A protected budget, at a time when expenditure elsewhere is being reduced, imposes a double duty to eliminate waste and unnecessary expenditure and to demonstrate at every turn that we are achieving value for money.
Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)
I welcome my right hon. Friend to his position; I am very pleased to see him and his team in place. One dilemma under the previous Government was that, although money was poured into various countries, whether it should have gone there was questionable. India, for example, has a space programme, and China hosted one of the most elaborate and expensive Olympic games ever. In South Africa, I recently visited the Khayelitsha townships, which were horrifying to see, but at the same time there are rich parts of that country. One must ask whether we might put more pressure on those countries to help themselves, rather than just passing on money—I hear, in China—to the tune of £30 million. Has the Secretary of State had an opportunity to consider those issues?
Mr Mitchell
I thank my hon. Friend for his detailed intervention. If he will allow me to come to the point directly, I shall then answer his specific point about China.
I was making the point that a ring-fenced budget imposes a double duty on my Department to eliminate waste and unnecessary expenditure, and to ensure that we achieve value for money. Within a few days of taking office, I cancelled funding for five awareness-raising projects, including a Brazilian-style dance group specialising in percussion in Hackney, securing savings in excess of £500,000. In addition, I am cancelling the global development engagement fund, which would have funded further awareness-raising activity in the UK, and creating savings of £6.5 million. I shall make further announcements on prudent and sensible savings over the coming weeks.
I expect shortly to be able to announce that more than £100 million will be saved from projects that are a low priority or not performing. That money will be reallocated to programmes that are more effective in helping the world’s poorest people. Last but by no means least, I am letting out another floor of my Department. That better use of space in DFID will earn revenue of almost £1 million a year, once let.
Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)
DFID has cancelled grant support for a project run by Scotdec, the Scottish development education centre, which has offices in my constituency. It was given no reason for the withdrawal, other than the new policy that the Government announced, and it was just about to submit the one-year evaluation of its project. Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that that is not the way to act if he is to encourage projects to respond to Government concerns? Surely Scotdec should have been given an opportunity to respond to any Government concerns about its project, and should not the Government reconsider the funding withdrawal that he announced a few weeks ago?
Mr Mitchell
I have had a letter from the hon. Gentleman on that point, and I wrote to him late last night. I apologise for the fact that he did not receive it in time for this debate. I should make it clear to him that several projects to which I put a stop will now proceed, and officials are in touch with those responsible for them, making clear our value-for-money requirements. However, I have cancelled five, including the one to which he refers, after looking very carefully at them and following advice from officials.
Let me list those five projects. I hope that the House will consider whether they should be funded from Britain’s development project. First, there was £146,000 for a Brazilian-style dance troupe with percussion expertise in Hackney. Secondly, there was £55,000 to run stalls at summer music festivals. Thirdly, there was £120,000 to train nursery school teachers in global issues. Fourthly, there was £130,000 for a global gardens schools’ network. And finally, there was £140,000 to train outdoor education tutors in Britain in development.
Spending money on international development in the UK rather than on poor people overseas seems highly questionable. We need to ensure that any expenditure has demonstrable outcomes in developing countries, and that is why I took the action that I did. However, I have written to the hon. Gentleman, and he will have a chance to see in some detail why we took those decisions.
Mr Lammy
Will the right hon. Gentleman comment on the Greenbelt festival, from which it was proposed that money be withdrawn? I make that point in the hope that he will appreciate that faith communities—particularly, the Christian community, as represented in that festival—have done a considerable amount over a considerable time to raise the prominence of development issues. We would not have had Jubilee 2000 and, then, Make Poverty History without that movement.
May I also say gently to the right hon. Gentleman that the projects that he outlined largely touch on young people—it is hugely important that they continue to lobby Governments to make more progress—and on ethnic minorities, in which regard we should recognise that when we talk about development, it includes those who have come to this country and look overseas to see what we are doing?
Mr Mitchell
The right hon. Gentleman makes an interesting and not unreasonable point. However, the balance of judgment that has to be made is whether this money should come out of the ring-fenced development budget. As I said, we intend, in very difficult economic circumstances, to seek to carry the country with us as regards the validity of this budget. I have explained in some detail why that is so important on moral grounds, as well as on national self-interest grounds. I feared that the budget was in danger of being discredited by some of the existing schemes that I have decided to stop, and that is why I made that decision.
Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)
There is a simple test for all the Department’s spending—does it fall within the definition of international development set by the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee? Clearly, none of these schemes did. If we are going to have ring-fenced spending, we will need to ensure that it falls within the DAC definition.
Mr Mitchell
My hon. Friend makes a very important point about value for money.
I suggest to the House that we will not be able to maintain public support for Britain’s vital development budget unless we can demonstrate to the public’s satisfaction that this money is really well spent. The lights have been burning late in DFID as we embark on our ambitious programme of reform. In the seven weeks since the election, we have wasted no time in laying the foundations for a fundamentally new approach to development—an approach rooted in rigorous, independent evaluation, full transparency, value for money, and an unremitting focus on results. Our Government will place the same premium on the quality of aid that the previous Government placed on the quantity of aid. We will judge performance against outputs and outcomes rather than inputs.
Hard-pressed taxpayers need to know that the expenditure of their money is being scrutinised fully and is really delivering results. We are therefore working to develop an independent aid watchdog, as we consistently promised throughout the past four years, to evaluate the effectiveness of DFID’s spending. We will also modify the way that aid programmes are designed so that gathering rigorous evidence of impact is built in from the day they start. This will allow us to take decisions about how we spend and allocate aid on the basis of solid evidence. I expect to report to the House shortly on both of those initiatives.
Mr Douglas Alexander (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) (Lab)
I would be grateful if the Secretary of State could reconcile the statement that he has just made with the written answer that he extended to me when I questioned the £200 million—the largest single cash announcement he has made in the past few weeks—that is now going to Afghanistan. When I urged him to clarify what that £200 million of input would deliver in output, he replied:
“We will make specific decisions on spending and focus areas in time for this event.”—[Official Report, 24 June 2010; Vol. 512, c. 349W.]
The event is the conference to be held in July in Afghanistan. Why was such an announcement made if the rigorous focus on outputs that he has upheld to the House as the new approach in the Department has been applied?
Mr Mitchell
The right hon. Gentleman makes a very interesting point. We are working on the effectiveness of measures that are already being taken in Afghanistan—[Interruption.] Well, if he will just bear with me, I will, in the spirit of his question, give him the answer to it. We are looking carefully at a series of inputs in relation to the effectiveness that they will achieve, and we hope to be able to announce some of the findings in the run-up to the Kabul conference. When the Prime Minister gave that figure, he was referring to the amount that we have managed to find for additional expenditure in Afghanistan as a result of closing down or changing other programmes. How that money will be spent will be accounted for by me to the House as soon as those decisions have been made.
Mr Alexander
I would hope that the right hon. Gentleman can do a little better than that. I hear that so far the only output from the £200 million that has been announced is a press release. Can he confirm what the £200 million is actually going to purchase?
Mr Mitchell
I think that the right hon. Gentleman can do a lot better than that. He will have to wait until we issue our proposals ahead of the Kabul conference, and then he will be able to judge them on their merit.
In addition, our aid budget should be spent where it is needed and where it can be best used. We have therefore started a review of all our bilateral aid programmes so that we can be clear that money is being properly targeted and worthwhile results obtained. We have already announced that we will end aid to China and Russia as soon as it is practical to do so. We want to work with them as partners, not as donors and recipients. We cannot justify giving taxpayers’ hard-earned money to a country that has just spent billions hosting the Olympics or is a member of the G8. In that context, my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) raised India. We will be looking very carefully at the Indian budget, and we will issue any new proposals as part of our bilateral review.
Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)
When the International Development Committee wrote its most recent report about aid to India, which is currently our biggest bilateral aid receiving partner, we did not call for an immediate end to the aid programme in India but proposed that between now and 2015—the millennium development goals date—the aid programme should be changed so that there was no longer a cash transfer after that date. The Secretary of State’s remarks suggest that he has not decided to go along with the Committee’s recommendation. What are his plans, and why has he taken that decision?
Mr Mitchell
I understand the hon. Gentleman’s interest in India; he was a distinguished member of the International Development Committee. I have seen that report, which makes a very valuable contribution and will be considered as part of the bilateral review of our India programme.
We are conducting a similar review of our multilateral aid budget. There are good reasons for working through international bodies, but I want to be certain that all our funding is being used to support programmes that align with our priorities, and that operational efficiency is as strong as it should be. In New York on Monday, in meetings with the heads of the United Nations Development Programme, UNICEF and the United Nations Population Fund, I had the opportunity to set out the reasons for this review. I have also spoken to the heads of other multilateral agencies, including the World Food Programme. At the Foreign Affairs Council in Luxembourg, I took the opportunity to discuss our plans with Commissioner Piebalgs of the European Union. Multilateral organisations that are performing well for the world’s poorest people stand to gain from this review, but if such agencies are not performing we will scale down funding, or even stop it altogether. Our duty to the world’s poorest people, as well as to the British taxpayer, demands nothing less.
Ann McKechin (Glasgow North) (Lab)
I welcome the Secretary of State and his team to their posts. I notice that one issue of which he has made no mention so far is gender. Can he confirm that gender equality and the role of women and children will receive equal, if not greater, priority under his guidance in the Department?
Given that the Secretary of State has a particular interest in Afghanistan, may I bring to his attention this week’s excellent BBC television report by Lyse Doucet about the status of women in prisons in Afghanistan, the vast majority of whom are in prison for no crime whatsoever, in breach of the international conventions that Afghanistan has signed up to? Can he give an assurance to the House that he will call on the Afghan Government to comply with their international requirements and to ensure that the position of women in Afghanistan receives the proper status that it deserves?
Mr Mitchell
I thank the hon. Lady for her comments. I will have a look at that report. On her first point about the role of women, I am coming to that directly in my remarks.
Doing the right thing with British aid is not just about saving money: it is about being honest and open about where our funding is going. Knowledge gives people the power to hold others—be they individuals, organisations or Governments—to account. That is why I have launched a new UK aid transparency guarantee that will help to make aid transparent not only to people in the UK but to those in recipient countries.
Mary Macleod (Brentford and Isleworth) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend give way?
Mr Mitchell
I am going to make a bit of progress, and then I will of course give way.
Building up civil society in the developing world is crucial to enabling citizens to hold their own political leaders to account. The transparency guarantee will help to create millions of independent aid watchdogs—people around the world who can see where aid is supposed to be going and shout if it does not get there. From January, we will publish full details of DFID projects and programmes on our website so that everyone can have access to information about where our funding is going and what it is intended to achieve. The simple act of publishing information can reduce the amount of corruption and waste, improve the quality of public services and increase public sector accountability.
I wish to make two further points about Britain’s bilateral aid programme. First, where it is relevant, in every country where DFID is active we will pay particular attention to the fight against malaria. It will be the responsibility of my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for International Development, whose involvement, expertise and knowledge in the matter is well known to the House. It is simply unconscionable that in this day and age, thousands of children and adults die every day from that completely preventable disease. If there were an outbreak of malaria in Europe it would immediately be stopped in its tracks. Reducing the burden of malaria in the developing world and focusing on the areas of highest infection will be an essential part of our programmes.
Secondly, we must extend far further choice for women over whether and when they have children. It is outrageous that today in sub-Saharan Africa, only 15% of women have access to modern methods of contraception. I simply lay this fact before the House: every year, 20 million women have unsafe abortions, and 70,000 of them, many still girls, die as a result. Some 215 million women around the world who want to use modern contraception do not have access to it. No statistic could more eloquently underline the importance of allowing women to choose whether to have children, and we will pursue that argument vigorously and single-mindedly.
I invite the House to consider the further point that in Niger, one of the poorest countries in the world, a population of 3 million in 1960 has grown to nearly 16 million today, and expert opinion judges that it will rise to nearly 60 million in the next 40 years. It is a country that suffers deeply from political, economic, climate and food insecurity. As I said last week in Washington, Britain will place women at the heart of our whole agenda for international development.
That subject is closely related to the Prime Minister’s insistence at the G8 last weekend on combined action on maternal and child mortality. As he made clear in Muskoka, a woman’s chances of dying in pregnancy and childbirth are one in 8,200 in the UK, whereas in Sierra Leone they are a stark one in eight. The resources agreed at the G8, including a significant contribution from the United Kingdom, should lead to an additional 1.3 million lives being saved.
Richard Ottaway (Croydon South) (Con)
I welcome what my right hon. Friend has just said. It is not just helping women that is to be welcomed, because it is a simple fact that no country has got itself out of poverty without first stabilising its levels of population growth. Furthermore, we are very unlikely to achieve the millennium development goals without stabilising population development. I warmly welcome his points and I urge him to give even greater emphasis to a global family planning approach to aid.
Mr Mitchell
I thank my hon. Friend very much for those comments. As the House will know, he can probably lay claim to being the House’s greatest expert on population issues.
Important though aid is, it is only part of the solution—a means to an end rather than an end in itself. The key to development is sustained economic growth. Over the years ahead we will help more countries put in place the building blocks of wealth creation—trade, a vibrant private sector, property rights and a low-carbon, climate-resilient economy. We are reorganising the structure of the Department to ensure a sharper focus on wealth creation and economic growth. I will give the House further details of that in due course. I am also considering carefully the contribution made through CDC and considering how to improve its capacity to take forward development objectives.
I turn to the support that we give to the brilliant non-governmental organisations, charities and civil society institutions whose work I have seen all around the world. It is often inspirational and a huge credit not just to their supporters but to Britain itself. They make an outstanding contribution to development work. As we said in opposition, we want to develop that work through our poverty impact fund. The principle of that fund will be both simple and clear: if an NGO is engaged in development work that takes forward the millennium development goals, we will be prepared to match-fund its budget if it, in turn, can increase its outputs and outcomes accordingly. That will, of course, be subject to our being satisfied of the probity of its funding and accounts. The fund will enable the taxpayer to piggyback on the expertise and development results of some of Britain’s best charities and NGOs. Again, I will report to the House on progress in due course.
As I mentioned earlier, we will never forget that one of the biggest barriers to global prosperity is conflict. Helping affected states and their people on to the ladder of prosperity is the greatest challenge of our time, so we will make conflict prevention, resolution and reconstruction central to our approach to development. I have visited both Afghanistan and Pakistan within the first few weeks since being appointed and witnessed at first hand the real challenges that exist in those countries. Together with the Foreign Secretary and the Defence Secretary, I was able to spend time not only with the Government of Afghanistan but with the brave men and women of our armed forces, who are doing such important but difficult and dangerous work.
Barry Gardiner
I am most grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way; he has been very generous.
On conflict, will the Secretary of State have discussions with his colleagues in the Cabinet about the situation in Sri Lanka and consider seriously the aid needs of the Tamil community in the north of that country? As I am sure he well knows, the aftermath of last year’s conflict has left a number of displaced and dispossessed people who are desperate to return to their homes and need all the assistance that countries such as ours can provide to ensure that they are not victimised further by the Sri Lankan Government.
Mr Mitchell
I hear what the hon. Gentleman says. The Government have considered these matters, and I will write to the hon. Gentleman to let him know what our current view is.
The reason for sending our armed forces to Afghanistan was one of national security, but if we are to make long-term gains that will provide stability when our armed forces eventually hand over to Afghan security forces, we will require a long period of development in concert with the international community, NGOs and other countries’ aid programmes. Through the new National Security Council set up by the Prime Minister, we are joining together defence, diplomacy and development to support security and stability, to help build a more effective Afghan state and to deliver development to people on the ground. Ahead of the Kabul conference, we are working with the economic cluster of Ministers to provide more support, particularly for training, boosting Government capacity and improving the workings of the justice system and grievance proceedings, which were referred to earlier. I expect to have more to say about that ahead of the Kabul conference, which both the Foreign Secretary and I will attend.
Our country is rightly famous for the contribution that we make at times of emergency and disaster around the world. There remain real challenges, some of which were demonstrated in the aftermath of the appalling events in Haiti in January. We want to ensure that Britain’s reaction is always the best it possibly can be, and for that reason we have made it clear that we will set up a review of how Britain provides emergency relief. That will involve all the organisations in Britain that make an important contribution to that work. We are currently in advanced negotiations on how the review will proceed and who will chair it, and again, I shall keep the House closely informed.
At the first International Development questions of this Parliament, I paid tribute to the work of the outgoing Prime Minister on international development. His passion and drive in this matter is shared in all corners of the House and throughout the new coalition Government. I know that it will be a priority for many in the House, and I am confident that we will make significant progress over the years to come.
Mr Alexander
Let me try to clarify the point that I am making. I am proud of our record, and the figures for the decade of delivery that we saw under Labour bear repeating. The House need not take my word for it. I am sure the hon. Gentleman will be willing to praise Oxfam if he has the opportunity to do so later, but Mark Fried of that organisation said after the summit:
“The only promise that counts is the Gleneagles one to increase aid by $50 billion by 2010 and that is the one they have abandoned today.”
It was at Gleneagles that the efforts of the former Prime Ministers, Tony Blair and my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), buoyed by millions of campaigners around the world, achieved the historic promise to increase aid by $50 billion by 2010, with $25 billion of that going to Africa, and also agreed crucial steps on debt relief—what a disappointing contrast with Muskoka and Toronto.
The Prime Minister, writing in Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper shortly before this weekend’s summits, said:
“I come to the G8 and G20 in Muskoka and Toronto with a clear commitment to make sure these summits deliver for people. Too often, these international meetings fail to live up to the hype and the promises made”
but he seemed all too willing to let other G8 leaders sweep their failures under the carpet by dropping the historic Gleneagles agreement from the final communiqué.
Mr Andrew Mitchell
In due time and on mature reflection, the right hon. Gentleman may regret the tone that he has adopted. He quotes one particular non-governmental organisation, but why does he not quote what CAFOD or ActionAid said, when they endorsed the Prime Minister’s leading role in trying to ensure that other members of the G8 stand by the commitments that they made at Gleneagles and to which I referred in my speech?
Mr Alexander
Well, let us be clear about what that “leading” role involved. Why is it that Downing street admitted to The Guardian that the Prime Minister had simply
“not fought for the commitments to be included”
in the communiqué? To quote another NGO, Save the Children was moved to describe the resultant dropping of the Gleneagles communiqué as simply “shameful”. So can the Secretary of State now tell us how many phone calls and meetings he and the Prime Minister held with other Ministers about maintaining their Gleneagles promises? Did they go the extra mile, or did they merely give up? The silence is deafening.
Mr Alexander
I am unyielding in my admiration for the right hon. Gentleman’s commitment and expertise on these matters. I recognise that an important process of pre-legislative scrutiny was undertaken by his Committee, but I do not believe that the question of how to ensure effective legislation is what currently divides us. What divides us is the prospect of a parliamentary motion taking the place of legislation. I hope that he agrees that legislation is required.
Mr Alexander
Forgive me, but I am reading from a background note published by Ministers that describes international development spending from 2013 as a “non-legislative item”. If Department officials are not following ministerial direction, that is an issue for the Secretary of State rather than us. I hope that, in the winding-up speech, this matter can be clarified, with a clear and explicit commitment to legislation, along with a date.
Mr Mitchell
The former Secretary of State needs to elevate the nature of his speech. The right hon. Member for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce), the Chair of the International Development Committee, had it absolutely right. I do not know where the former Secretary of State got that piece of paper from, but I am happy to confirm that it is not accurate.
Mr Alexander
I am grateful for that admission from the Secretary of State, and I hope it will be followed up in the Minister’s speech later with some clarity on the timing of when we can seek to make progress.
Malcolm Bruce
I certainly accept that there was not only a lively debate but activity in the Department and the evaluation unit. The Committee visited the unit and met its representatives.
I do not suggest that there was a monopoly on one side of the House in this regard, but a permanent problem with aid and development is establishing what works, how the extent to which it works can be measured, and how people can be reassured that it works. We have all observed it in journalists’ correspondence, and in what is said by people we meet around the place. The bottom line is that people think that billions of pounds of British taxpayers’ money is being put into Swiss bank accounts on behalf of corrupt politicians. We all know that that is not what happens to the vast majority of UK aid—indeed, we hope, to any of it—but we must constantly improve presentation so that we can reassure taxpayers that that is demonstrably not the case, and that the aid really is making a difference. If it is possible to improve the existing mechanism, there is no reason why we should not try to do so.
The summit on the millennium development goals will take place later this year. The current Parliament is due to end in 2015, the year in which the MDGs are set to be delivered. We know that they will not be, but during this Parliament we must determine exactly how much we can prioritise them, and what we must do about those in regard to which we fall farthest behind.
Let me say something about MDGs 4 and 5. The Select Committee paid particular attention to maternal health in the last Parliament, and I was horrified by what we learned during that inquiry about the appalling and needless suffering of so many women in so many parts of the world. As has been said by the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Ann McKechin), whom I welcome back to the Committee, the problem is often the treatment and status of women rather than our inability to deliver services that could meet the needs of women in poor countries. Certain societies do not recognise the importance or necessity of such services.
I was particularly shocked, when the Committee visited northern Nigeria, to be told that the education of girls involved learning the Koran by rote, on the grounds that that was all that they needed to know because they would be married by the time they were 12 and pregnant by the time they were 13—and, in many instances, dead before they were 14.
We should not even think of girls in societies of that kind in the context of girls in our own society, who, at 12 or 13, might be regarded as far too young to give birth, but who might none the less be quite well developed. In countries where nutrition is poor, many girls aged 12 or 13 are not fit to give birth to children, which is why they die. Worse, those who do give birth are expected to deliver their children alone, without any form of attendance or support. I consider that appalling. I welcome the commitment to treating it as a priority, but I think it reasonable to suggest that the health of children up to the age of five should be linked to it. While the welfare of women has a very big impact on children, an awful lot of children die at the age of three, four or five. Unless we consider the two issues together, we may not be able to achieve the results for which we hope.
I was slightly surprised that the Secretary of State did not say more about the role of economic development and the role of the partnership between the public and private sectors, although there was a passage in his speech about it. Unlike the former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South, I am not talking about the role of the private sector in delivering social programmes and the like. I am talking about how we can deliver economic development better in partnership: how DFID’s engagement can create a climate in which businesses, whether indigenous or external, will invest and commit themselves to developing countries, so that those countries can grow their economies and revenue bases and reduce their dependence on aid.
The Secretary of State mentioned CDC in passing. The way in which CDC operates—as a kind of arm’s length “fund of funds”—is very easy to criticise, and Private Eye has had a field day doing so. However, CDC has clearly delivered a substantial amount of investment at no cost to the taxpayer, and has increased our development capacity because of the profitability of the fund. There are question marks over the use of tax havens, although I see the logic of the argument that that releases even more money for investment. I do not particularly want to develop that argument, but I have felt for some time that there is a gap between DFID’s development activity and CDC and the business sector that could be addressed constructively.
Mr Andrew Mitchell
The Chairman of the Select Committee has made an extremely good point, but if he reads the report of what I said today, he will see that we are very much on the case. We are restructuring the way the Department handles the issues to which he has referred, and we are looking specifically at CDC to ensure that we secure as much development gain and value from its work as we possibly can. We aim to do more rather than less.
Malcolm Bruce
I shall be interested to see how that develops.
I entirely accept that investing in health, education and infrastructure helps to create a climate in any given country that will make the business community better able to thrive and survive, but there are times when a partnership with business is needed to establish what aspects of health, education and infrastructure will best deliver investment. If we could do that more effectively, we might speed up the process of economic development rather than just aid support, with the help of better trading relations, a World Trade Organisation deal giving people real access to markets, and the elimination of internal obstacles to trade, both within countries and between neighbouring countries.
The hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) has left the Chamber, but I want to say something about climate change. There is concern in the developing countries that all the commitment to poverty reduction could be easily subsumed into climate change measures. The 10% ruling was arbitrary, but I consider it important for the Government to focus primarily on poverty reduction, and not to allow climate change to divert funds that could be used for that purpose. We need a safeguard to ensure that that does not happen.
I am conscious of your constraint, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and I shall not say too much more, but I want to make two or three comments about the country programmes. The Secretary of State said that there would be a review of those programmes. We need a fairly early indication of how that will take place, so that people are not faced with too long a period of uncertainty about where it is heading. Other countries, notably and recently Sweden, have conducted such reviews. It might be best if our review focused on a smaller number of countries in which our assistance could be even more effective.
The Secretary of State will not be surprised to learn that I have a view on the debate about China. The hon. Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley), who is present, does not agree with the rest of the Committee on the subject. I entirely accept that the development relationship with China should come to an end—that is not a point of concern to me—but the general relationship with the country seems to me to have continuing value, and it will require some budget if it is to continue. The Committee heard effective evidence of how well that can be done, and what a contribution it makes to reducing the MDGs, given the size and scale of China. I urge the Secretary of State to look at our report again. It does not really disagree with his conclusions or those of his predecessor, but it does suggest that there should be a little more space in the continuing relationship with China. That would be very beneficial to UK-China relations and to poverty reduction in China, not because the Chinese want our money but because we would be able to work with them to deliver better ways of achieving poverty reduction. Such an approach might even lead to partnerships in third countries between Britain and China, which would be a remarkably interesting and worthwhile development. That is all I would ask that he take on board.
Mr Mitchell
The Chair of the Select Committee is on to a very good point, because the Conservatives have for years said that it was wrong to spend taxpayers’ money in China. That country has just spent £20 billion on the Olympics, it has a space programme and it is a nuclear power. Since we made that plea on behalf of the British taxpayer, the right hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mr Alexander) has spent tens of millions of pounds on British aid in China. The Chair of the Select Committee rightly says that we need a partnership, an elevated relationship whereby we work together on common objectives and have a high-level dialogue on partnering on aid and development. We are in the process of working out precisely how to do that.
Malcolm Bruce
I am grateful for that intervention. The only practical point I make is that it requires a bit of funding to do demonstration projects.
Interestingly, the same arguments will start to apply to India, and I suspect that we are unlikely to come to the same conclusion on India. I found it interesting that the arguments used by the previous Government to justify the closure of the programme in China were used in reverse to defend the programme in India.
Mr Mitchell
China and India are fundamentally different, because India has more poor people within its boundaries than the whole of sub-Saharan Africa and the average income of an Indian is a third that of a Chinese. Of course we also have deep historical links with India through the Commonwealth and many other mechanisms, so I do not think that there is a direct analogy between the two countries.
Malcolm Bruce
I think that intervention proves my point. The Select Committee may well wish to examine the issue of India again, but we have not yet been formulated and we have made no such decisions.
Finally, it is impossible to have a discussion on global poverty without examining this country’s engagement in Afghanistan. I am concerned about the debate about Afghanistan, because the situation is complicated. Inevitably, the focus is on the military engagement and the casualty rate, and rightly so. We have to show, and we do show, enormous appreciation of the bravery of our forces and the sacrifices that they are making in order to contain an insurgency and create the space for a successful Afghanistan that can manage its own affairs—we hope that that is what will happen. It worries me that people do not appreciate what is happening in Afghanistan. They do not appreciate that we are operating across the whole country, that we are having real success in large parts of it and that the military operation in the south is not the whole expression of what is happening. So it is important that the Department for International Development’s engagement in Afghanistan continues in a way that demonstrates that what we are trying to do is build a state that can not only run its own affairs and enable us to remove our military support, but deliver to its people a development programme that will take them out of poverty. That will be the best and strongest basis for a secure future for Afghanistan and it is the right and proper, legitimate aspiration of the people of Afghanistan. Our UK aid programme must be focused on that more than anything else. People are looking for a clear separation between aid and development, and military support and containment; they are not looking for confusion between the two. I hope that, provided we can keep that right, we will be able to maintain a programme in Afghanistan that will continue to command popular support, because it is a poor country that we should and would be engaged in even if it was not in a conflict situation.
This is an important debate. The change in Government clearly will result in questions from all parts of the House about the future of our overseas development assistance, but what is clear to me is that we have a coalition Government who are determined to deliver our United Nations obligations and to apply principles to development that will continue to mean that Britain is a leading global player. As Chairman of the Select Committee, I look forward to its engaging with the Department in a constructive way that will help to shape that policy and influence it positively.
Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)
It is almost five years to the day since the Gleneagles summit, which was a high point in the UK’s influence in global development policy. We led by example and we secured commitments from the other G7 members to double their aid and reach the UN’s 0.7% contribution target. Allied to that, the European Union gave a parallel commitment in the same year. I therefore deeply regret that the Gleneagles commitments were dropped from this year’s G7 communiqué, because that has given the impression, at least to some non-governmental organisations—the shadow Secretary of State mentioned Oxfam and Save the Children—that our country’s development policy under the coalition Government has fallen at the first hurdle.
I will say that the Prime Minister is right to lay continuing emphasis on the millennium development goals, as Tony Blair and my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) did before him. However, I say to the Secretary of State that that is not an alternative to doubling aid, because the Gleneagles commitment on doubling aid was a means to an end; it was designed to get the world’s major donors to provide the resources to make meeting the MDGs possible. We simply will not get all children in least developed countries into primary schools if that doubling of aid commitment is not met; nor will we be able to reduce by three quarters the ratio of mothers dying in childbirth—that MDG is the most off track.
I therefore wish to focus on what I believe the Government should do to re-engage other G7 and European Union countries in order to get them to honour their commitments, and to build a continuing profile for our country as a development leader. There are two opportunities to do that over the next six months. The first is to use the negotiations within the World Bank on the 16th round of the replenishment of International Development Association funding—IDA16—to persuade donor countries to increase their financial commitments to the World Bank’s next three-year IDA period. IDA is the World Bank’s window for lending to least developed countries. This matter is important because the World Bank is the world’s biggest multilateral development agency and, for all its faults, we will not achieve the MDGs unless IDA has increased resources to do the work it does. The United Kingdom is in a particularly strong position to influence others on commitments to IDA, because in the current IDA round—IDA15—we were the world’s largest donor.
IDA16 will doubtless be discussed at the annual meeting of the World Bank in October and will probably be finalised at the spring meeting next year. IDA16 is particularly important in relation to the MDGs, because it will cover the last three-year period leading up to 2015, which is the target date for implementing the MDGs. Ending up with an IDA16 with less money pledged than in the current IDA round would limit the opportunity of donors to ensure that the MDGs are met. So I hope that the Minister of State’s response will set out the Government’s plans to talk to their opposite numbers in other G7 and EU countries and to seek from them the assurance that they will make commitments to IDA.
I chair an international parliamentary body called the Parliamentary Network on the World Bank, which is a network of some 1,200 parliamentarians, roughly half from developing countries and half from developed countries. We seek to hold the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to account, especially to parliamentarians.
Mr Andrew Mitchell
May I ask the hon. Gentleman a serious question on this point? On what basis does he believe the Government should decide on the amount of funding for the IDA replenishment? What is his view on the mechanisms by which we should reach that conclusion?
Hugh Bayley
I would like our Government to contribute to IDA16 at least the same proportion of their development finance during the three-year period in question as the UK contributed to IDA15. In other words, it would be more money in real terms but the same proportion of UK aid overall. That would be a good starting point. If the UK were to make such a commitment, implying an increase in our contribution to IDA for the crucial three-year period leading up to 2015, we would be in a strong position to seek commitments from other development partners. I know that, in reality, some G7 countries—Italy, for instance—have made very negative decisions on development spending. There are others, however—including France, which was broadly on track, although it might have slipped back a bit now—that we ought to be able to persuade to make a firm commitment in relation to IDA.
I can make an offer to the Secretary of State. Through the Parliamentary Network on the World Bank, I have been one of the architects of a campaign among parliamentarians in countries north and south to raise the question of the IDA16 replenishment in their Parliaments, and to seek commitments from donor country Governments to debate the financial commitment they will make to IDA16. We are also seeking a serious debate in the Parliaments of developing and developed countries on what can be done to improve the aid effectiveness of the World Bank’s IDA programmes, building on the Paris declaration, the Accra programme of action and the findings of the World Bank’s own mid-term review of IDA15. That review contained some good proposals about how the World Bank could achieve more with the money that it already has.
I would also like to see the introduction of a peer review mechanism, so that one World Bank office can review the performance of another, in order to drive up aid effectiveness. I would like parliamentarians in each country to have a role in these processes. In Ghana, for example, one would expect the country office of the World Bank to report to parliamentarians in Ghana. That is not to say that the constitutional relationship should change. The World Bank is owned by its shareholders, and they are Governments. In relation to achieving greater aid effectiveness, however, we want to see more openness and transparency.
We are going to run the campaign as well as we can and in as many Parliaments as possible, in the north and the south, during the period of discussion on the IDA replenishment. I hope that the UK Government will support us. I have already written to the Secretary of State to ask him to come to the Parliamentary Network on the World Bank’s annual conference in December as a keynote speaker. We are also about to launch a call to action to publicise what we are doing. If he were able to provide some sponsorship and support for that in July, or some time soon, we would welcome that.
Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)
I, too, welcome the Secretary of State and his team to their posts and wish them well. I am pleased to have the opportunity to contribute to this debate on an issue that, perhaps more than any other, defines how the UK is seen in the wider international community, and matters to people in constituencies across these islands.
Five years ago today, in 2005, I was in The Meadows in Edinburgh making final preparations for the Make Poverty History march and demonstration that took place ahead of the G8 summit in Gleneagles. I was privileged to play a role in organising that event and in the movement that grew up around the Make Poverty History campaign. The Gleneagles summit was very much a defining moment for the anti-poverty movement, not only because of the international commitments that were made there but because civil society made itself heard on that occasion. Some 250,000 people marched through Edinburgh that day. For a city of half a million people, that was a phenomenal outpouring of civic statement about what was really important to those people, and indeed to those from all over the UK and further afield who joined the demonstration.
Citizens demanded that the G8—the richest countries of the world—take action. As the right hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mr Alexander) said, the £50 billion in commitments that was made at Gleneagles is currently about £20 billion behind. For example, in real terms, the £25 billion pledged for Africa has translated into only £11 billion. That is a shameful shortfall. Frankly, last week’s manipulation of the statistics that came out of Gleneagles, whereby people used the fluctuation in the value of the dollar to make it look as though they were giving a lot more than they are, was a real disgrace. In that context, I welcome the commitment by the new Government that they will honour the 0.7% aid target and focus efforts on achieving the millennium development goals. I am very pleased that DFID’s budget is being protected in the current spending round. I am also glad about the non-partisan approach that the new Government are taking, which is a reassurance to Members across the House.
I welcome the emphasis that is being placed on transparency in how aid money is going to be spent. Much has already been said about transparency and accountability. Increasing transparency has obvious potential to improve accountability in aid delivery. It is important to say, however, that a great deal of work is already going on to make aid spending accountable and transparent. Many NGOs are already highly innovative in how they monitor the effectiveness of aid. At an international level, organisations such as CIVICUS are improving the practice of aid delivery and ensuring that there is a highly regulated and well-monitored and evaluated sector. I urge the Government not to reinvent the wheel when they consider their own moves forward.
It is also important to recognise the potential of increased transparency in raising public awareness of the fantastic work that is being done by DFID and the organisations that it funds, and in making visible the positive impact of development aid. We always hear about the downsides of aid—the mistakes, the failures, the things that go wrong—but we do not hear nearly enough about the success stories. It would, however, be unfortunate if increased transparency were to result in a proliferation of more abstract data and increased monitoring and evaluation at the expense of an enhanced profile for the life-changing impacts of aid. In that respect, I am concerned that the new independent quango charged with impact assessment that the Government are proposing will add little to the existing accountability mechanisms. It is somewhat ironic that they are keen to encourage civil society in developing countries as a means of holding their Governments to account, while they are slashing funding to the excellent civil society and educational organisations here in the UK that are equipping our own young citizens to hold the Government to account. That is deeply regrettable.
It is important to emphasise that aid really does work. Since 2005 and the Gleneagles summit, 4 million extra people have received life-saving antiretroviral HIV and AIDS treatment, 4 million more children have survived beyond the age of five and 33 million children are in school who would not otherwise have been. However, let us acknowledge both the scale of the problems and the impact of the shortfall in the aid commitments. As others have mentioned, 350,000 women are still dying in pregnancy and childbirth every year, and almost all those deaths are preventable. Some 9 million children under five are still dying every year, also almost all from preventable causes. On current projections, millennium development goal 4 on child mortality will not be met until 2045, which is an unacceptable abdication of responsibility by the international community.
I should like to outline some of the challenges in improving accountability and transparency in aid. One of the key questions that we need to ask is: transparent and accountable to whom? Clearly, citizens here and in the countries that receive aid need to be involved in the process. One of the practical challenges that we face is that developing countries receive support from a range of governmental and non-governmental sources, which all have different reporting requirements, some of which are highly bureaucratic.
Mr Andrew Mitchell
The hon. Lady, whose constituency I visited during the general election campaign, is making an excellent speech. She asks to whom the accountability should be extended, and she is absolutely right to do so. The answer is, first, to our own taxpayers, who need confidence that their hard-earned money is being spent well, but secondly to the people in poor countries whom we are trying to help and support. If we place in their hands the ability to see what is happening to the money, we help them to make their own civic leaders and politicians accountable for how it is spent.
Dr Whiteford
I agree with the right hon. Gentleman, but I reiterate that the way to do that is not to slash funding to the very organisations in this country that will make the work that is going on far more transparent to taxpayers and put it in a format penetrable to people other than policy wonks and statisticians. I urge him to think again and go back to the drawing board on that point before we see a lot of very good work undermined and destroyed.
There has been some progress in recent years on streamlining and co-ordinating reporting mechanisms for NGOs and developing country Governments, and I stress the value of doing that. The resources that are spent on servicing bureaucracies could be better utilised elsewhere. Another concern about the accountability of development spending is that a lot of it tends to be project-based, short-term and unco-ordinated and to duplicate existing structures. Consequently, it is often monitored in technocratic ways and measures inputs rather than impacts.
There is a dreadful monitoring and evaluation culture in the development sector, which has grown up around very short-term interventions. I would welcome assurances that the Government’s plans will not add to the pick-and-mix plethora of short-term, fashionable projects that fail to have any sustained, long-term impact and that just create a full employment scheme for highly paid, and often highly qualified, consultants based in northern countries. I would rather make a plea for monitoring that is commensurate and proportionate and does not place an undue bureaucratic burden on developing countries, and for impact assessment that is qualitative and longitudinal, not just quantitative, and helps people to improve how they work rather than simply tick boxes.
Let us face it—most people working in development already have an ultimate accountability mechanism in the aid sector. If they do not deliver within a year or two, their funding is cut. It is as simple as that. That contrasts rather markedly with how Government Departments operate in many parts of the developed world and even more sharply with the UK, where bankers in failed businesses seem still to be receiving bonuses.
Much has been said this afternoon about the importance of economic development and questions have been asked about how DFID will take forward its engagement with the business community. No one would deny that foreign direct investment has an important and invaluable role to play, especially in middle income countries. However, I wish to stress to the Secretary of State and others that it cannot be a substitute for aid in meeting the millennium development goals. There are few examples of places where foreign direct investments generate enough economic growth to finance essential services such as health, education and access to water. Those are the services that underpin poverty reduction everywhere it has been achieved.
It is fascinating to note that regardless of the political ideology and economic philosophies underpinning the success of countries in poverty reduction, they have all ensured that their citizens have access to basic health care, education and clean water. We are talking about countries as disparate as Cuba and the so-called tiger economies of south-east Asia. They could not be more distinct in their philosophy and ideological approach, but they have all had essential public services at their heart. They have also had strategic economic investment and planning, as well as proper investment in infrastructure. Those are the things that will create the necessary pre-conditions in which businesses can thrive, but one cannot be done without the other.
One of the key economic challenges in the efforts to address global poverty is that women are significantly over-represented among those living in extreme poverty, those missing out on school and those unable to read and write. They are also grossly under-represented in political forums, corporate boardrooms and decision-making bodies around the world. We will not be successful in addressing global poverty unless we tackle the economic, political and social exclusion of women. There is no doubt that economic investment and growth have the potential to lift people out of poverty, but women need to be part of that and they need education to be able to be part of that.
Increasingly, people connect to global markets for labour, goods and services, but a lot of evidence suggests that the benefits of economic development bypass the poorest, most of whom are women. In and of themselves, the markets will not address poverty and, in particular, will not address the inequality between women and men—indeed, they can compound existing gender inequalities. I hope that the Government will look closely at that issue and consider how the support that the UK offers in business development overseas benefits both women and men.
Part of the answer lies in improving the accountability of business and corporations operating in developing countries. I warmly welcome the fact that the Government are committed to establishing a grocery ombudsman, as that has the potential to improve significantly the welfare and working conditions of the predominantly women workers in the global food supply chains that supply our supermarkets. Numerous constituents have written to me on this issue, and I hope that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills will work closely with DFID to bring forward concrete proposals in this area. Incidentally, the ombudsman will also have the potential to deliver benefits to agricultural producers in the UK, including thousands of people in my constituency who work in farming, fishing and food production.
My final point on accountability is about our own accountability to the global community with regard to climate change. Developing countries are already experiencing the adverse effects of increased flooding, droughts and extreme weather events associated with man-made climate change. Few poor countries have the resources to invest in mitigation measures. Nor do they have the resources to rebuild infrastructure and houses that are damaged or destroyed. Climate change is destroying habitats, reducing food security, fuelling conflict and creating refugees. I hope that the Secretary of State can assure me that he intends that, distinct from the aid budget, we should meet our obligations to those countries that have not caused climate change but have to cope with the consequences. I echo the questions posed earlier about climate financing and ensuring that aid money is not vired over to deal with the effects of climate change.
Poverty reduction is fundamentally a matter of political will and priorities. That will does exist in our civil society, and the challenge for Members of Parliament will be to rise to the expectations of our own citizens and keep the aid promises that we made five years ago.
Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)
I should like to say a few words about the issue raised by the withdrawal of a grant to an organisation based in my constituency, which I raised briefly in an intervention on the Secretary of State. I appreciate that we are considering many issues of great international significance in this debate, and I do not want to take up too much time on what some may regard as a relatively tangential matter, but I want to raise my concerns about the way in which, certainly on the information I have, a small organisation doing good work has been unfairly treated. That decision also raises issues about the Government’s approach to development awareness activities in the UK funded by the Department, and the Minister should say something about it in his reply to the debate.
I shall first give some information about the grant that has been withdrawn and the organisation that received it. Hon. Members will recall that at the start of the debate the Secretary of State, as he set out his decisions, headlined one of the five projects from which funding has been withdrawn—a Brazilian-style dance troupe with percussion in Hackney. That project was certainly given some attention in the media. I presume that the only reason why the Secretary of State headlined that project was that “Brazilian-style”, “dance troupe with percussion” and above all “Hackney” are phrases that set every bell ringing in the right-wing media and pressure groups. If one mentions “Brazilian-style dance troupe” and “Hackney” together, one does not really have to argue any further in some people’s minds. That is an unfortunate approach to the debate and I suspect that it stereotypes that particular group in Hackney. I have no knowledge of the group, but I suspect that my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) who intervened on the Secretary of State wanted to suggest that it was somewhat more than the latter had portrayed.
In any event, I assure the House that when I visited the very small office of the organisation based in my constituency, there were no samba bands practising in the room and no indication of anything to which anyone would have any objection if they studied its work. Scotdec—the Scottish Development Education Centre—is based in my constituency but does work in many parts of Scotland. It is a respected educational organisation that works with local authorities, the Scottish Government and development organisations and has been supported by DFID for work with teachers over many years. I can only assume that the work was recognised by the further grants that were given to it for the current project, which has now had its funding withdrawn just one year into a three-year project.
Scotdec tells me that it works with almost half the schools in south-east Scotland. That is a lot of work for just three staff, not only answering inquiries but going into 228 schools. I have had letters from staff at Jewel and Esk college in Edinburgh and other organisations with which Scotdec has worked, saying that it performs valuable work that fits into wider educational programmes and teacher training programmes in south-east Scotland. Mention was made of the fact that the project works with nursery teachers, as if that was sufficient to say that it must in some way be a bit dotty. Let me assure the Secretary of State that, according to my information, the project works not only with the occasional nursery teacher but with further education colleges and their educators as part of programmes that have been validated and recognised for their value since the project started just over a year ago.
Mr Andrew Mitchell
The hon. Gentleman is making a strong case for his constituents and the organisation that is based in his constituency. We are endeavouring to get him a copy of the letter that should have reached him this morning; I hope that it will arrive during the debate.
The issue is not really whether the expenditure that he has identified is of good quality; it is whether it should come from the budget that I mentioned earlier. The hon. Gentleman may wish to consider whether it is an appropriate way to deploy international development expenditure or whether there are alternative forms of support that his constituents might be able to attract.
Mark Lazarowicz
I know that the Secretary of State’s office has been trying to get a letter to me this morning and this afternoon. Unfortunately, despite contact with both my office here and my constituency office, it appears still to be lost somewhere in cyberspace. The right hon. Gentleman will appreciate that I have to proceed on the basis of the information that I have.
I shall address the Secretary of State’s comment about whether this project is the type of work that should be funded by DFID, but I want first to say something about the project itself. The Secretary of State has almost given support to my argument because he does not appear to suggest that there is anything untoward about the project. I understand that he had no criticism of the work that the project has undertaken. Indeed, I am informed by Scotdec that it was about to submit its first-year report to DFID, but had not actually gone into the Department, so presumably the decision to withdraw the funding could not have been based on any knowledge or understanding of the project. The Secretary of State’s comments seem to suggest that that is the case: the decision was based on a general principle rather than any criticism of the project’s work.
The project organiser was very unhappy—I can see why—about the fact that the first information the organisation had that the project was going to lose its funding was a phone call and e-mail received late on a Friday afternoon, followed by a press notice on the Monday. Apart from being extremely discourteous, that was hardly a fair way to allow a small organisation to respond to a withdrawal of funding which has severely impacted on its ability to carry out its work.
I shall look at the letter that the Secretary of State is seeking to send me. It may well arrive by more conventional means during the afternoon.
Behind the Secretary of State’s decision there is, as he has indicated, a clear political choice to stop funding for projects of this nature. Is there now a general policy of not funding projects promoting development awareness and education in the UK? If so, that takes matters further than the Department’s press statement on 17 May, in which the Secretary of State said:
“There is a legitimate role for development education in the UK, but I do not believe that these projects give the taxpayer value for money.”
No evidence has been given that these sorts of projects do not give value for money. The project in my constituency has been cut just over a year into what was to be a three-year project. A lot of preparatory work has been carried out for the next year, which suggests that it would not be good value for money to cut it at this stage.
In any event, the press notice from the Secretary of State seemed to suggest that there might be some circumstances in which development education was to be funded in the UK by DFID, but if the policy is now that no development education will be funded in the UK, that is extremely regrettable.
The Secretary of State and the Prime Minister face criticism from some of the more right-wing elements on their Back Benches and in the media for agreeing, with all the qualifications that we have heard in this debate, to maintain spending on international development. It seems that a few projects are being thrown to the wolves—a bit of red meat for the right wing—in order to distract their attention from the rest of the Department’s work, and if that is the case it is extremely regrettable. If the Secretary of State is, indeed, withdrawing support for development education in the UK, I ask him to reconsider that decision in respect of the project in my constituency and more generally, because it would be a retrograde step and a reversal of what Governments of all parties have recognised as a minor, but important part of the activity that DFID funds here in the UK.
I shall briefly make the case for Government support of development education in the UK. Everyone in the debate so far has recognised that an essential component of international development is justice—trade justice and debt justice. That requires action not only by Governments and international organisations, but by civil society, including citizens, business organisations, trade unions and many more besides. Such action is more likely to be achieved, and Governments are more likely to move towards greater trade justice and debt justice, if as many people in this country as possible are able to engage with and understand the issues—yes, through awareness-raising work among the general public.
If the Government are withdrawing funding from such programmes, I find that extremely regrettable. In terms of the project in my constituency, where better to start on awareness-raising work than with our youngest citizens-to-be? I urge the Secretary of State to reconsider his decision on that project and, if it reflects a wider policy, the wider policy as well.
Mr Thomas
I welcome the fact that the right hon. Gentleman has been elected to resume the chairmanship of the Select Committee. The notion that there was no delivery on the Gleneagles commitments in the last five years is simply wrong. I accept that there was not enough delivery, and the hon. Member for Banbury and others are right to say that some countries need to do more. The Secretary of State has yet to prove that his Department is as influential and as central as it was before 6 May.
Mr Andrew Mitchell
I am disappointed that the hon. Gentleman, of whom, as he knows, I am a great champion, should descend to this level. What matters about Gleneagles is that those solemn commitments, made, rightly, in front of the whole world community and its press, should be acted on. If, after the debate, he looks at the reports that have come out of the summit, reads the statement made by the Prime Minister and sees what organisations such as ActionAid said about the summit, he will see that our Prime Minister banged the drum for standing by those commitments and made it absolutely clear that Britain’s commitment leads on this point.
Mr Thomas
I want to champion the right hon. Gentleman’s career, too, and I suspect that he will need me to, so I say gently to him that the G8 was the international community’s pivotal meeting before the UN’s poverty summit, and not to refer to the Gleneagles commitments in the communiqué sends a powerful signal to the rest of the international community, which, I worry, will be a signal for them not to do what they should do at the UN poverty summit in September. It would be a terrible shame if the Department developed a reputation as the place where the Prime Minister sends not only those he does not want to sack yet, but those he does not want around. I hope that I am wrong, but I fear that the Secretary of State and the Minister are in danger of becoming Parliament’s answer to Jedward: they are both political treasures, and there is plenty of sympathy for them and a strange fascination about what they will do next, but at one performance soon neither will be in their usual place.
As my right hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State said, what is striking about the Secretary of State’s speech today and, indeed, his speeches so far outside the House is the lack of any clear strategy for the Department. Under the previous Government, DFID sat at the heart of development thinking. It was sought out by Governments internationally, valued in Europe and respected by development bodies throughout the globe, from UNICEF, which the hon. Member for Castle Point (Rebecca Harris) mentioned, to the Grameen bank, which the hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) rightly praised.
Under this Government, the Department should be at the centre of development thinking, but it simply is not yet. It could champion reform of the World Bank, which, despite doing a lot of good, needs to evolve quickly, get its staff out of Washington and into the African countries that it is supposed to help, and continue the reform of its governance. However, there has been nothing from the right hon. Gentleman on that issue yet. Under him, DFID could champion reform of the UN development system in order to help all developing countries, including those with whom we do not have bilateral aid programmes. It could continue to demand a change to how the UN humanitarian system works—or, in the case of Haiti, did not work anything like well enough. The Department could demand that UN agencies work together better in developing countries, but we have heard nothing from the right hon. Gentleman on that topic, either. He could certainly lead the development community on highlighting the finance that is necessary to help developing countries deal with the impact of climate change, but there has been radio silence on that issue, too.
What signal does the right hon. Gentleman think the £10 million loan that he announced today to the Turks and Caicos Islands sends to his Back Benchers, who are desperate to see more impact made in developing countries to help the needs of the world’s poorest? The lack of clarity about the Government’s strategy for the UN’s millennium summit was particularly striking in his speech, because he spoke more about what he will not fund and will not do than about what he will fund. In particular, he said very little about what he plans to do about the principal development event of the year. He wants an action plan to emerge from the summit, but what does he want to see in it, and how will he get it? What conversations has he had with the Deputy Prime Minister, who is due to represent us there, and what are the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister going to do to help secure the outcomes that the Secretary of State desires?
The Department is a great place in which to serve, and I join the right hon. Gentleman in praising the officials who serve there. The Ministers who serve there have a heavy responsibility to champion, challenge and mobilise for the world’s poorest, but the striking thing about what the Government have said and done so far is, first, the lack of any clear strategy on what they will do next in order to help those poorest people, and, secondly, the failure in international meetings to do the heavy lifting that is required in order to keep development at the centre of global political attention. I hope that things will change, but I fear that they will not.
The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Mr Alan Duncan)
I start by being nice about the hon. Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas), even though he does not seem to have been inclined to be nice about me this afternoon. I do, after all, sit at his former desk. I have lifted the chair a little so that I can see things, but it would be churlish not to acknowledge that, as my predecessor, he remained in post for almost seven years—a record in the Department, I think—and did a lot of good when he was there. Indeed, having heard the debate this afternoon, such is my affection for him that, should he so wish, I am very happy to endorse his application to become Governor of the Pitcairn Islands.
It has been a genuine pleasure to listen to this debate. It is evident from the quality of the contributions and the passion with which they have been delivered that global poverty is a topic about which Members on both sides of the House care very deeply. I should like to thank them for their observations, and I will turn to their contributions in a moment.
In opening the debate, the Secretary of State made it clear that we cannot allow current economic pressures to deflect us from our goal of helping the world’s poorest people. We will not turn away and abandon those whose need is so great. True leadership is forged in the heat of adversity, and this Government will not be found wanting. However, neither will we be prepared to squander the hard-earned money of British taxpayers.
My right hon. Friend spoke of the radically new approach that this Government will take to international development—an approach that has accountability and transparency at its core. These are not empty words. It is these principles that will allow us to demonstrate to the British public that their money is being put to good use: that it is saving lives, creating futures and, ultimately, securing a more prosperous and peaceful world for us all. Combating poverty is not only morally right: it is, as the Secretary of State has said, very much in our national interest. Abroad and at home, development is the right thing to do.
Last weekend, the Prime Minister took to the global stage to reaffirm Britain’s commitment to meeting the internationally agreed goal of 0.7% of GNI to be spent on aid from 2013. We all know that some G8 members have not kept to the promises they made five years ago at Gleneagles, and that is utterly shameful. However, those who say that we should cut our aid budget are asking us to break our word; we are not prepared to do that, and nor would we ever wish to. Two wrongs do not make a right. Since when has someone else’s weakness been a good reason for us to surrender our belief in a fairer, safer and more secure world? We will do our bit, and we will continue to hold others to account at each and every opportunity.
Britain is in the lead on international development. Indeed, developed countries are looking to us for inspiration as much as developing ones are looking to us for help. We are the first country to say that we will enshrine the 0.7% contribution in legislation; and unlike America, for example, our aid is not tied to commercial interests. We have a dedicated Whitehall Department whose Secretary of State has a seat in Cabinet, and now, too, a seat in the National Security Council. This Department has a voice, and this Department is being heard. Put simply, Britain can be proud that it is the standard-setter and principal leader in a world in which charity confined to home would be an abrogation of our wider responsibilities. As many hon. Members have said, charity may start here, but it must not end here.
Despite all this, we must be frank and honest: there are some who, through the pages of the press or elsewhere, still question the validity of spending taxpayers’ money on international development. They speak of money given in good faith but diverted into the hands of tyrants or used to prop up corrupt regimes. The natural corollary seems to be that we should therefore give up and go away, at whatever human cost that might entail. I, and we, and I think Members on both sides of this House, profoundly disagree.
As the Secretary of State has said, the answer lies in greater rigour, more transparency, and full accountability. It lies in the new UK aid transparency guarantee that will help us to track money far more accurately. It lies in our conviction that internal evaluation is not enough and that we must set up an independent body to scrutinise where and how we are spending taxpayers’ money. The answer, in short, lies not in passive defeatism but in active resolve.
I wish to acknowledge all the speakers who have contributed to the debate. The first after the Front Benchers was my right hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce), who said that it was good that we were trying to measure results but pointed out how difficult it is to measure everything easily and consistently. No doubt the Select Committee that he chairs will look into exactly that type of issue in the months ahead.
The hon. Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley) made a strong plea for us to engage fully in negotiations on the structure of IDA16. We will do that, and indeed we are doing that. My hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Esther McVey) made a charming, thoughtful and generous-spirited maiden speech, and I think it is fair to say that it was listened to admiringly by all of us in the Chamber and also, I noted, by the noble Lord Hunt, her Conservative predecessor.
The hon. Member for Glasgow North (Ann McKechin) rightly wants aid to be so successful that it does not need to be permanent. We wholly agree. That, in a nutshell, is exactly what the “development” bit of international development is all about. We look forward to the continued wisdom and consistent expertise of my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry), and the House, and particularly we on this side, appreciated the consensual tone of the contribution of the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford).
My hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland) made his maiden speech. It took me a little time to tune into his Stevenage accent, and I hope he will let me know when Robbie Williams is next playing locally. His thoughtful comments on international development were much noted, and I hope that his interest in the issue will continue. Likewise, the hon. Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk), in his maiden speech, made a passionate defence of the interests of beleaguered Palestinians, an issue that will figure in both our foreign and defence policy. I am sure that he will make many such comments on the topic in future. I enjoyed his warm account of his own meeting with Gillian Duffy as well—someone I would quite like to have met, I have to say.
My hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White) said that we need to tackle Beveridge’s five evils globally. The hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Anas Sarwar) made a very good speech, and I look forward to his contribution to the International Development Committee. Many other Members spoke, and I fear that I will not quite have the time to go through their contributions, but I think I have covered all the maiden speeches. I hope the House will forgive me if I do not mention everyone who has spoken. I certainly urge everyone who has contributed to continue to participate in our debates and oral questions, and to form a cadre of informed opinion in the House that will continue to raise international development to the position that it deserves in our deliberations.
Jane Ellison (Battersea) (Con)
Many of the speeches this afternoon rightly referred to the human rights of women and girls around the world. Will my right hon. Friend make a brief comment on the extent to which the human rights of gay people are under threat in some parts of the developing world with which we have significant ongoing relationships? I am wary of any sense of using aid as a political weapon, but I hope that the influence of the Department can be brought to bear as appropriate.
Mr Duncan
As my hon. Friend will appreciate, I have a particular interest in that issue, and I follow it and feel for it closely. I see the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) in his place, and he is also a champion of the issue at home and abroad. We do not want to use aid as a weapon, but we will always be very forthright in defending people’s rights. The whole issue of gay equality is moving from a domestic argument to a global one, and that is where our passions should now more sensibly rest.
I have mentioned the good speeches that we have heard today, but sadly I have to say, and I think the House feels, that the tone set by the shadow Secretary of State lived down to our expectations rather than up to them. It added to our deliberations a nasty and divisive flavour that simply does not need to exist on this topic. The right hon. Gentleman has experience, which we value. Might he not have had the inclination to share that experience and appreciate that his reputation and the House would both benefit from learning from it? We would much rather do that than watch him hop around looking for a scrap in the playground. Also, for him to use his former position to say that he knows the name of the particular official who worked on the speech for his successor as Secretary of State is nothing short of contemptible.
The right hon. Gentleman seemed to blame half the world’s poverty on a strange historic conspiracy between General Kitchener and the Conservative party. If he wants to know the real feeling of the modern Conservative party on this issue, he need only look at the number of people on the Benches behind me today to realise what they feel. He accused us of being ideological, but I can assure him that we are wholly non-ideological. To us, what matters is what works. On user fees, for instance—which he mentioned—we want to get children into school, and in many cases we are paying for those user fees out of our budget. He laboured the point about 0.7% this afternoon—talk about giving a dog a bone—as if there were a great issue about a departure from the clear policy on which we stood at the election. We are committed to enshrining 0.7% in law from 2013. As he well knows, we are considering how to proceed, not whether to proceed, as he implied. He will just have to wait for an announcement at the appropriate time.
Additional climate finance, as the previous Government made clear, will come from the existing aid budget. On the question of how the G20 working group on development will be held to account—something that he knows all about as a former Secretary of State—it will report to leaders through their sherpas. On the forthcoming millennium development goals summit, the UK ambition is to agree on an ambitious action agenda for attaining the MDGs. The shadow Secretary of State absurdly asked for our post-2013 spending plans. But so badly did his party mess up the public finances that he could not even, when he was Secretary of State, give us his own figures for next year.[Official Report, 6 July 2010, Vol. 513, c. 1MC.]
I have acknowledged the insightful contributions that we have heard from Members today, but I now wish to acknowledge the influence and record of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. His passion for international development is known to all in this Chamber and none can doubt his genuine commitment and considerable expertise. Indeed, rarely has a Member of Cabinet shadowed their portfolio for the length of time—nearly five years—that he has done. Only yesterday, Jon Snow said:
“Andrew Mitchell is unquestionably the best prepared Secretary of State—nobody has waited longer in the wings and everyone in the sector knows of his commitment to the sector”.
It is telling that within a few short weeks my right hon. Friend has already set in train a number of initiatives that will allow us to bring about a fundamental re-think of the way we give aid. He has, for example, launched two critical reviews—a bilateral review that will look at how we spend money directly with specific countries, and a multilateral review that will follow the money that we are channelling through other bodies such as the EU, the World Bank or the UN. Meanwhile, the full scale value-for-money review that he has commissioned is already yielding savings that can be directed back to the front line.
In today’s economic climate, we need—more than ever—to be able to show the British taxpayers that their money is going where it can do most good, and that when it gets there, every single penny of it is put to the best possible use. Our focus will be at the sharp end, where it matters—on results not process. It will no longer be the number on the aid cheque that matters, but the number of people it helps. As my right hon. Friend said, our thinking and action will not stop there. We will look ahead to the millennium development goals summit and we will push everything that we can to focus on poverty.
Britain can be proud of its position on international development. We can hold our heads high and I hope that Members on both sides of the House will join us in the fight and the cause ahead.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the matter of global poverty.