0.7% Official Development Assistance Target

Bob Seely Excerpts

Tuesday 8th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I shall try to sum up, Madam Deputy Speaker, by thanking my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) and my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall) for the debate, and by suggesting a compromise.

I am happy to sign up to 0.7%, but I think we need to work to change the definition, because the one we use is a technical, official one, and we can do better. I suggest broadening the definition of “aid”, so that it includes peacekeeping operations, and the BBC World Service and TV. If I were the Government, I would seek a compromise here to say that we will get back to the 0.7%, but let us work on a longer-term definition that broadens the definition of “aid” from purely economic development—that is what the current OECD Development Assistance Committee ODA definition is—to one that encompasses peacekeeping at the beginning of the developmental process and goes all the way up to the BBC World Service and radio and the support of civilisational values at the other end. That is a longer-term solution, rather than the stale and dry argument between “0.7% good, not 0.7% bad”.