Overseas Development Assistance

Debate between Lord Agnew of Oulton and Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne

Wednesday 14th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

I disagree with the noble Lord that this is a small sum of money when it would be 1p on income tax and is something like four times the amount committed to hiring 50,000 more nurses and four times the amount committed to hiring 20,000 more police officers. We have set out, as agreed in the Commons yesterday, the criteria for re-establishing it and committed to re-establishing it when they are met.

[Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne (Con)]

Does the Minister agree that, given that the amount of funding is a little smaller than earlier, despite the fact that it is extremely generous in global terms, this is the moment to look more carefully at the way in which these funds are spent? Might it be possible, for example, to introduce open tendering rather than automatic disbursements of funds before there is any open competition, as is happening at the moment and has been happening for a long time? Might he also be willing to consider some successful monitoring? There are many ways of monitoring, but at the moment the funding does not seem to be subject to such things and certainly it is not published. Will the Minister consider those two items crucial when he delivers the outcomes of this slightly lower sum of money being spent?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

I strongly agree with my noble friend. We need to be much more stringent in our assessment of how the money is spent. We saw from the St Helena Airport incident, for instance, that money can be wasted. I am sure that with less money available there will be much more scrutiny. That tends to be a natural reaction in organisations. I will take back my noble friend’s useful suggestions to the Treasury.

Children: Missed Education

Debate between Lord Agnew of Oulton and Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne

Thursday 15th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, we believe that part of the reason for the awareness of more children being home educated is as a result of the duties we placed on schools in the 2016 guidance, which I mentioned in my first Answer. The next stage is to ensure that local authorities are using all their existing powers to investigate cases of where home education might be occurring or where children are missing. Yesterday, in our integration strategy, we announced further measures on that.

[Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne (Con)]

My Lords, will the Minister confirm that these children will form a high priority for the teaching of English, reading and writing, given that they are most likely to be among the three-quarters of a million people in the United Kingdom who do not speak our native language?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

Obviously, children who are missing from education are one of the highest priority categories that we have to worry about. In the integration strategy document announced yesterday, we launched a consultation on the guidance and enforcement of independent school standards—a lot of children can end up in such small schools—and guidance on unregistered schools, which will deal with similar issues.