International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill

Baroness Suttie Excerpts

Friday 23rd January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Suttie (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate my noble friend Lord Purvis on his truly exemplary speech. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Judd, that he is indeed a very good thing. I also congratulate my noble friend Lord Fox on his wonderful maiden speech and I look forward very much to working with him in future.

It is a genuine pleasure to speak in a debate in which there has been so much consensus. The journey to this point has been made possible because of the support of all the mainstream parties—the previous Government as well as the current coalition. The NGOs have played an absolutely vital role, as have charities and religious organisations. To have achieved the internationally agreed target of 0.7% is a cause for celebration. As many have also already said, it is a chance for Britain to demonstrate real leadership on the world stage—to fight against poverty, ignorance and disease across our increasingly interconnected world.

However, we cannot be complacent. Our country has a proud history of supporting aid but the case for aid has to be constantly made and refreshed for each new generation, especially at times of economic crisis and global insecurity, when there is a tendency to retreat inwards towards nationalism and insularity. We constantly need to restate the case that helping a nation and a people to help themselves, and assisting in the prevention of economic or environmental disasters before they develop into global crises, make sense for all concerned, donor and recipient alike. This is particularly true when it comes to health and disease prevention. In our increasingly globalised world, disease can travel extremely quickly, as we have seen most recently with Ebola but is also the case with less publicised infectious diseases such as TB, particularly multidrug-resistant TB.

Last February, I had the privilege to go in a cross-party delegation to Cambodia with Results UK to look at several projects where British aid has made a significant impact. One particular visit stands out for me: we visited a child vaccination project in a hospital in the outskirts of Phnom Penh, where we saw mothers and grandmothers proudly queuing up with their vaccination passbooks for their children and grandchildren. One grandmother we spoke to said that it was such incredible progress to see several previously fatal infectious diseases—childhood killers—being eradicated from her country.

According to the World Bank, Cambodia has exceeded the millennium development goal poverty target and is now one of the best performers in poverty reduction worldwide. In many ways, Cambodia is a success story for international aid. The country has benefited from assistance from many countries and is now much more self-sufficient. Although the UK bilateral aid programme has now ended, UK funding is still incredibly important through the big global “basket funds” for vaccinations, AIDS, TB and other programmes.

One area where particularly good progress has been made is in the vaccination rate: 10 years ago only 60% of children were being reached by vaccinations in Cambodia; today the coverage has gone up to 95%. The immunisation programme is an example of effective pooling of funds in a global pot. The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization—GAVI—supports the poorest countries with the cost of vaccines. As the economies of the recipient countries improve, they will gradually pay an increasing percentage themselves. The coalition Government are a major supporter of GAVI: DfID has been the largest global contributor during the past five years and I am delighted that this is to be continued for the next five years.

I conclude by restating the case for the Bill. First, it will make aid predictable for recipient countries and so improve the capacity to make intelligent long-term investments. Increasing the predictability of aid will greatly help service providers plan their projects more effectively in both the short and long term. This will allow for effective prioritisation and significantly improve the quality of UK aid. As the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, said so powerfully, the Bill will also help shift the debate from the quantity to the quality of development aid. The focus can therefore shift to the quality of aid investment and how best to get value from it. This should help address a key concern of the public, who ultimately want to see the best value for UK aid.

By passing this Bill, we are a step closer to ensuring that developing countries can reach their full potential and achieve self-reliance in the long term. When Bill Gates made his excellent speech to us at the end of last year, he stressed that the ultimate aim of aid had to be the successful transition from recipient status to self-sufficiency. He said that we should aim for a world where nations and individuals are able to chart their own course and attain their own destiny, unburdened by disease or extreme poverty. I believe that this Bill, with strong UK leadership to encourage other nations to follow suit, will help us to achieve this objective.