Commonwealth Development Corporation Bill
Flick Drummond ExcerptsTuesday 10th January 2017
(7 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Commons Consideration of Lords Amendments as at 10 January 2017 - (10 Jan 2017)
Mrs Flick Drummond (Portsmouth South) (Con)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. It is the beginning of a new term after a long Christmas holiday, but may I remind Members that, if they want to speak, it is really easy—they just have to stand up?
Mrs Drummond
Sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was expecting the Minister to respond to the first speaker, and I did not realise that I would be called next.
Stephen Doughty
I am listening with interest to the hon. Lady’s point, but does she not accept that there is a bit of a double standard? The Secretary of State issued a letter on 16 December to other DFID suppliers—institutions, non-governmental organisations and people in receipt of our aid money—making it very clear that they should not invest in tax havens, yet she seems unwilling to apply the same to the CDC, which is also in receipt of taxpayers’ funding. Is that not a double standard?
Mrs Drummond
No, because we are investing in very difficult areas where robust systems may not already be in place, plus the CDC has very clear guidelines about where the money is going, so we can track it much more easily than we can with other aid agencies.
Jeremy Lefroy
Does my hon. Friend agree that the issue is not so much about offshore centres being invested in by funds from a variety of jurisdictions, but about the tax paid in-country for activities undertaken in that country? In that respect, the investments made by the CDC are excellent and provide major tax revenues of billions of dollars a year for those country’s Treasuries.
Mrs Drummond
I thank my hon. Friend for his very clear explanation, which beefs up what I have said.
On the case for raising investment limits, amendments l, 3 and 6 and new clauses 2, 5 and 10 would hamper the CDC in the same way. We have already extensively debated the need to increase the limit, and we have had assurances from the Minister and the CDC that business cases for further capital will be clearly made. We will have the full strategy document this year, backed by an analysis from the CDC of the development impact. We will have both before any additional money goes through the CDC.
On the focus of spending, I agree with my hon. Friend the Minister that the question of which specific investments are made must be delegated to DFID and the CDC. That would give the Government oversight and ensure that sustainable development goals are at the heart of the investment. Putting countries or, indeed, limiting sectors in legislation would make delivering the development process cumbersome, and I believe that it would hobble the CDC.
Pauline Latham
Does my hon. Friend agree that supporting the CDC is absolutely vital if we are to achieve the global sustainable development goals by 2030? We need to mobilise the private sector to fill an annual financing gap of about $2.5 trillion every year.
Mrs Drummond
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. One reason that I am so passionate about the CDC is that we need to build the capacity of developing countries. In my first speech on this subject, I said give a man fish and he will eat it, but give him a fishing rod and he is set for life. That is exactly the philosophy behind the CDC that I am so keen on.
There are circumstances in which some relatively more developed countries are host to companies involved in much poorer ones. As with the misplaced fears about offshore financial centres, we should not close off any path to investment and development. New clauses 3, 4, 6 and 9 all fail in that respect. All the amendments before us share a fundamental weakness and a misunderstanding of the CDC’s role in the world. We put less of our development investment through the CDC than other countries do through their equivalent bodies, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller) mentioned earlier. We should be doing more through the CDC if we want to develop mature and robust market economies in the developing world, which is why I welcome the Bill.
Markets are transparent and flexible, and they empower people who take part in them. The aim of our development policy should always be to encourage self-sufficiency and the development of market economies. As I said in my first contribution on the Bill, the CDC is transparent, as the NAO report agreed. I champion the CDC’s philosophy of enabling people to build their own businesses, rather than handing out grants. It is an efficient and transparent model, and we should all give the Bill our wholehearted support and continue to be a major investor in improving the lives of our fellow citizens in developing countries.
Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)
I will speak to amendment 3 and new clause 6, which are in my name, and I will offer support for the Labour party’s amendments that I have added my name to.
Nobody here is arguing that the CDC should not exist. We all recognise there is a role for development finance and private investment. As I noted on Second Reading, the Scottish Government have just set up their own investment mechanism in Malawi. But even if we wanted to change some of the deeper fundamentals, that is not in the scope of the Bill. The Government, probably deliberately, have presented a very narrow Bill with the aim of increasing the statutory limit of their investment. Therefore, by definition, that is what our amendments must focus on.
I hope that the Government will see—certainly in the amendments I have tabled and, I think, in the Labour ones—that we have tried to respond to and take on board some of their concerns about some of our amendments in Committee. It is up to the Government to respond and indicate how they will take our concerns on board. We all want to work constructively with the Government on the Bill. We want to recognise and maintain the consensus on the importance of aid, our commitment to 0.7% and the effective use of those resources.
Amendment 3, which is in my name, and amendments 2 and 4, which are contingent on it, gets to the heart of the technical aspect of the Bill: what the cap on investment in the CDC should be. The Government have been repeatedly asked for their reasons behind the figures of £6 billion and £12 billion in the Bill, and I am afraid that they have still come up short. The best we have heard is that this is roughly what they think is needed, or could be managed, over the coming years. In the lifetime of this Parliament, that could still equate to an additional £1.5 billion to £2 billion a year of investment from the official development assistance budget to the CDC. As we have repeatedly said, every penny invested in the CDC is a penny not invested in other mainstream, grassroots and not-for-profit development projects and support.
On Second Reading, I asked about the use of a formula to link the cap with overall ODA budgets, and I proposed such a formula in Committee. The Minister’s first concern about a formula was that it would blur the line between stock and flow. But the aid budget is a flow. It goes up and it can, theoretically, go down as well. I recognise that the CDC investment is a stock: once funds are transferred, that is where they stay and they remain part of the overall capital fund. However, the formula would ask the Government, each time they want to disburse funds to CDC, to calculate how those funds will relate to overall aid spending in the coming years.
The Minister’s second concern was that my formula in Committee effectively discounted the £1.5 billion already invested in the CDC. Amendment 3 and the contingent amendments take that into account. By my calculations, based on figures from the Library, this formula would still allow the Government to invest an extra £3 billion, or a total of £4.5 billion, in the CDC by 2021. Even if the Government will not accept the amendment and we cannot persuade enough of their Back Benchers to join us in the Lobby to support it, I hope that they will commit to recognising that the £6 billion figure currently stated in the legislation is a maximum and that any additional investment they intend to make will ultimately reflect the ebb and flow of overall ODA calculations in any given spending round.
Irrespective of the caps and limits, much concern has been expressed throughout the passage of the Bill over how some aspects of the CDC’s resources have been spent in the past and how they will continue to be spent in the future. That is what I seek to address with new clause 6, which is particularly important in the context of increasing—potentially quadrupling—the overall resources available to the CDC. I welcome the range of amendments in Committee and here today that attempt to place various conditions on the exercise of the power to increase the limit.
As I said at the start, owing to the scope of the Bill, my amendments and those of Labour Members must relate to the increase in the limit from £6 billion to £12 billion under the terms of section 15(4) of the Commonwealth Development Corporation Act 1999. Try as we might, it has not been possible to find a way to attach conditions to the investment of up to £6 billion. The Government have indicated that the timetable for using the statutory instrument powers would be some way in the distance, so it is not unreasonable to suggest that there should be some kind of conditionality and review process before those powers are used, especially given that we will apparently have so much time to prepare.
New clause 6 combines two conditions I called for in Committee: before the Government could increase the limit of their investment, the Secretary of State would be required to make an assessment of how an increased limit would contribute to a reduction in poverty, which is the statutory aim of ODA in the International Development Act 2002, and how that increase would help to meet the sustainable development goals. The Government have repeatedly argued that the CDC is doing both those things very effectively, in which case this is hardly an onerous request, but the new clause would have the effect of making it much clearer that this is the CDC’s overall purpose and that commercial gain, returns on investment and even raw figures on the number of jobs created are not an end in themselves, but only the means to the end of reducing poverty and building a more stable and secure world. Again, the responsibility is on the Government, if they will not accept our amendments, at least to acknowledge the concerns being expressed and to give commitments to show in any business case they publish for further investment how the key pillars of poverty reduction and the global sustainable development goals will be advanced.
I briefly speak in favour of, and indicate the Scottish National party’s support for, the range of thoughtful amendments tabled by the Labour shadow team and by the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty), who serves on the Select Committee on International Development. I welcome the fact that there has been cross-party support for the amendments and suggest that the Government pay attention to that. There remains consensus in this House and across the country in support of the principle of aid, the 0.7% target and, of course, the effective use of that aid. Many of Labour’s amendments, as the hon. Member for Edmonton (Kate Osamor) said, simply ask DFID to hold the CDC to the same standards that the Government now demand of their external stakeholders. Their recent bilateral and multilateral development reviews were pretty much unilateral declarations of everything that was terrible and wasteful on the part of so many of their stakeholders and demanded that the highest standards of efficiency, impact and transparency be applied to them. It stands to reason that those standards should also be demanded of the CDC.
A Government who say they want to crack down on tax dodging should not be allowing an agency of which they are the sole stakeholder to be making use of offshore tax havens. A Government who want value for money and clear impact from their aid budget should not be afraid to ask for reporting on exactly those areas. My colleagues and I will be happy to join the Labour party, hon. Members from other Opposition parties, and any Conservative Member persuaded of the case in the Lobby in support of any amendments they wish to press.
I said on Second Reading that it was disappointing that the scope of the Bill was so narrow. The Government had the opportunity to widen the scope to strengthen the CDC’s effectiveness, transparency and accountability. They also had that opportunity with the substantial and, in some cases, creative amendments that have been proposed by Opposition Members from different parties. If Ministers continue to indicate an unwillingness to accept amendments—it is disappointing that they did not table any of their own to reflect the concerns raised by Members—they must give the strongest possible commitments now in response to the concerns we have raised. The Government must recognise, as the Labour Front Bench spokesperson said, that this is the beginning, and not the end, of a process.
Commonwealth Development Corporation Bill
Flick Drummond ExcerptsTuesday 29th November 2016
(7 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Commonwealth Development Corporation Act 2017 View all Commonwealth Development Corporation Act 2017 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Stephen Doughty
It is a mixed record. We had a joint DFID-DTI—as I think the Department was called then—Trade Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas), who did a lot of good work in trying to bring those things together, ensuring investment went to key infrastructure projects, different corridors in Africa and elsewhere, but it is a mixed record and the hon. Gentleman makes an important point.
There are many CDC investments that I and others welcome, which are well run and have delivered poverty-reducing outcomes in the poorest countries. We have heard about some of them today, such as those in Sierra Leone and Uganda. Indeed we were with the National Audit Office earlier today talking about some of the projects it had visited which clearly do justify our investment.
But where is the robust business case for such a large increase of billions of pounds of taxpayer spending? Why has this Bill been published before a CDC investment strategy? In the explanatory notes, the Secretary of State describes forecast market demand as the justification for the Bill. However, she has not explained this at all there; neither has she done so today, and nor did she in answer to a parliamentary question I put to her. I asked her to explain this concept of forecast market demand, but instead of an assessment that might justify this spending of up to £12 billion of taxpayers’ money, I was given some classic development waffle, such as:
“As set out in the UN’s Global Goals, urgent action is needed to mobilise”.
The answer did not go into any level of detail that we would expect on the spending of such a considerable sum of money.
Let me also be clear that, as Members may have gathered earlier, I am also critical of a whole series of actions and policies at the CDC that I am sorry to say occurred under the previous Labour Government; the sell-off of Actis was mentioned, and there was also excessive remuneration, and massive investments made in markets that already attracted foreign investors—which incidentally is still going on. These are just some of the issues that should have inspired tougher intervention. To give credit where it is due, many of the actions that the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) took in agreeing that new strategy took us away from some of the mistakes made in the past, but my question is whether they have gone far enough in justifying such a huge increase in the funding.
We should look at what the NAO said. Yesterday’s report noted:
“Our previous scrutiny of the Department’s oversight of CDC led to important, positive changes.”
It points to improvements in financial performance, organisation and prospective—let us return to that issue in a moment—development impact, as well as the clamping down on executive remuneration. The NAO also agrees that the strategy set by the Department in 2012 has been met.
However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) pointed out, the question for the House today is not merely whether the CDC has made improvements on a previous record deeply mired in controversy, or whether it is now adhering to the strategy set for it—which we can argue was right or wrong—in 2012; the question before us is whether a good enough case has been made that the CDC is performing so well and so effectively that it should receive that volume of increase in funding versus other potential outlets for that development spending.
It is common sense that asking any institution, let alone one with a history of recent problems, to take on a significant increase in its funding over a short space of time may lead to less optimal outcomes and, at worst, failure. Were we proposing an additional £12 billion for those dangerous campaigning NGOs or the dastardly World Bank, or worse still the EU development funds, I have no doubt that the Government Benches would be crewed by the anti-aid brigade warning of the risk of our aid being “stolen” or squandered. But because it is for a more obscure part of our development finance architecture and has the words “private equity” and “private sector” associated with it, we seem to be willing to accept a lower level of assuredness.
Mrs Flick Drummond (Portsmouth South) (Con)
Did the hon. Gentleman also read the bit of the report that says:
“Through tighter cost control, strengthened corporate governance and closer alignment with the Department’s objectives, CDC now has an efficient and economic operating model”,
and DFID’s
“governance arrangements of CDC are thorough”?
Stephen Doughty
I did; I have read the whole report. It also states:
“It remains a significant challenge for CDC to demonstrate its ultimate objective of creating jobs and making a lasting difference to people’s lives in some of the world’s poorest places.”
It goes on to make other serious criticisms. On reporting impact, the NAO says:
“Changes in reporting development impact over the last four years have made it difficult for CDC and the Department to set out a consistent picture of what has been achieved.”
It criticises the CDC’s failure to deliver on the evaluation contract, which was a key part of the business case for the last recapitalisation involving more than £700 million. It criticises the CDC’s claim to have created 1 million jobs, stating that
“in 2015 it reported that more than one million direct and indirect jobs had been created…CDC does not attribute these jobs directly to the investment it makes in the company. Since 2012 it has been considering how to measure job quality but has not yet established an overall methodology to do so…its progress has been slow”.
Worryingly, the NAO warned that
“recruitment and retention challenges remain a significant risk to CDC’s operations.”
That is crucial for an organisation planning a massive financial expansion.
The CDC has indeed clamped down on excessive pay, although the CEO still takes home more than £300,000 a year, which is significantly more than the Prime Minister. However, the NAO also reports that
“the Department and CDC will shortly be negotiating a new remuneration framework”.
Could we expect salaries to go back up? Particularly worrying, one would think, for a Secretary of State who thinks that most of our aid is being “stolen” or squandered is some of the NAO commentary on the CDC’s efforts to tackle fraud and corruption. The NAO tells us that the CDC has
“only recently established systems to consolidate records of all the allegations it receives…This made it harder for it to provide comprehensive reporting to the Department. ”
The NAO report states that DFID’s own internal audit team concluded that the figure of just four allegations of fraud and corruption at the CDC in the entire period from 2009 to 2016 was “surprisingly low”. At the very least, the CDC is worthy of the same level of robust scrutiny and criticism that is levelled at other development funding outlets.
Mrs Flick Drummond (Portsmouth South) (Con)
It is a pleasure to speak in support of a Bill that will strengthen one of the world’s oldest and most respected development organisations. The Commonwealth Development Corporation has always enjoyed cross-party support and has been an important part of the transition of Britain from colonial power to leader of international development. The Bill is a sign of the focus this Government have given to the CDC and to our overseas development programmes across the board. We can be proud of our commitment to supporting overseas development in all its forms.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) said, when this Government took office in 2010 the CDC was a byword for strategic confusion and mismanagement. Everyone from the National Audit Office to Private Eye could find something to object to in either its structure or its activities. Thanks to the work of this Government, initiated by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) and followed up by his successors, the CDC and the way DFID manages it have evolved and improved. The CDC has radically transformed its approach over the past five years, following new objectives agreed with the UK Government. It targets investment where it is most needed, has the greatest impact for the poorest and delivers value for money for the UK taxpayer.
Many of the fears about the Bill and criticisms of the CDC that have been aired today belong to a different era. Some of my constituents have raised the issue of the amount of money that we spend on foreign aid. It is important that that money is spent wisely and transparently in helping countries to develop economically. A strong country will provide for its citizens, meaning that there will not be the economic migration that we have seen over the past few years.
By channelling money through the CDC, we can clearly see where it is going and where it is working. Although the National Audit Office report published yesterday identified some further room for improvement, it was very positive about the work done by DFID and the CDC, as the Secretary of State laid out. I am pleased that Members recognise the great improvements made since the 2008 NAO report and the criticisms of the CDC made by Select Committees in the 2005 Parliament.
I will focus on the reality of the CDC, the future of its work and the potential we will create with the passing of the Bill. The long-term aim of overseas development policy is to build economies and societies like our own—educated, free, and politically and economically stable. The philosophy behind the CDC has always been the same: give someone a fish and we feed them today; teach them to fish and they will eat for a lifetime. In particular, investing in women, where much of our aid is targeted, is investment in a generation, as every mother puts money towards educating their children.
The CDC currently invests in more than 1,200 businesses in more than 70 countries. Those investments supported more than 1 million jobs in Africa and Asia in 2015, almost 25,000 of which were created directly last year. As my hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Marcus Fysh) said, there is a virtuous circle of investment, job creation, tax revenue generation for the host Government, creation of sustainable businesses and reinvestment by the CDC at the end of the cycle.
The CDC has reached the ceiling of current Government backing—the Government’s investment of £735 million last year took it up to the limit of £1.5 billion. Through the reinvestment of past profit, it has built up a bigger portfolio, standing at just under £4 billion. It is therefore clear that the CDC is able to support development and recycle the returns to support further investment. We should not be reluctant to enable the CDC to do more and unlock potential. The NAO is clear that the CDC now has an efficient and economic operating model that is working and has improved its procedures for recording allegations of fraud and corruption.
With the clear investment strategy agreed under this Government, the aim is to make the great majority of new investment directly into businesses. If we want to achieve the global goals for sustainable development by 2030, we need to mobilise the private sector and work together. That helps the CDC in two ways. It allows it to help target its involvement at areas that genuinely meet the remit of supporting businesses that struggle to attract private sector investment. It also helps it to meet one of the goals set out in yesterday’s NAO report, namely better tracking of the success rate of the CDC’s investments. The CDC now concentrates on the poorest countries in Africa and Asia, where business finds it hard to attract stable and responsible investment from the private sector. It is right that the development finance institutions lead the way in those countries, and we should not be shy about it.
We invest more in aid overall than our European partners and invest less through development finance institutions. The CDC estimates the investment gap of unmet demand for capital investment in Africa to be more than $100 billion. If we want to bring jobs and growth to the poor, we must help them to help themselves. This simple and, I hope uncontroversial Bill does that. It is not an approval or a commitment to give the CDC access to £6 billion immediately, but to give it when there is a strong, robust, accountable and transparent business case that will provide the best value that aid can provide. I hope the House supports the Bill.
Oral Answers to Questions
Flick Drummond Excerpts(7 years, 5 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
I note that the Social Mobility Commission has recorded today that more working- class youngsters are benefiting from higher education than at any point in our history. The Government have invested record amounts in childcare and the early years, and the attainment gap, as the report acknowledges, has actually narrowed. The hon. Lady refers to the education system and the reintroduction of grammar schools, so I refer her to the report commissioned by a Labour council in Knowsley to look at how it could improve educational achievement there. That report said:
“Re-introducing grammar schools is potentially a transformative idea for working class areas”.
Mrs Flick Drummond (Portsmouth South) (Con)
Today the BBC World Service announced its biggest expansion since the 1940s, including 11 new services in different languages, bringing the total number of languages covered around the world to 40. Does the Prime Minister agree that this is an excellent example of soft power and a lifeline to many people around the world?
The Prime Minister
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. The service that the BBC provides through its World Service and the independent journalism that that brings to millions of people around the world is very important, including by bringing that to people in places where free speech is often limited. It is important to support the BBC World Service, which is why we are investing £289 million over the next four years so that it can provide accurate and independent news to some of the most remote parts of the world.
Yemen
Flick Drummond Excerpts(7 years, 6 months ago)
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Mrs Flick Drummond (Portsmouth South) (Con)
Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the United States Congress recently passed the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, which is aimed at the Saudis? Does he think that that is why the Saudis are starting to scale back some of their attacks?
Keith Vaz
My fellow Yemeni—by birth—is right. I think that the pressure in the United States Congress, to which I shall allude later, is making a difference, especially given recent events. I think that it takes more than the United Kingdom to do this and that Congress has a very important role.
Developing Countries: Jobs and Livelihoods
Flick Drummond Excerpts(7 years, 10 months ago)
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Mrs Flick Drummond (Portsmouth South) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Moon. What a great opening my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) gave to the debate on this incredibly important subject. As I had only two minutes to speak the other day, I was unable to congratulate the Minister on his knighthood—congratulations!
The UK has made significant contributions to improving the livelihoods of the poorest on the planet, and it is in our interests to help developing states strengthen further, economically and politically, if we are to avert the rise in emigration to the UK from developing countries. The UN states that we will need to create 30 million new jobs every year to keep up with the growth in the global working-age population. The enormity of that challenge is not something that the developing world can—or even should— shoulder by itself.
Our commitment to overseas business development should not be seen as just another programme aimed at helping the poor. It helps everyone, including the countries giving the aid. We are a trading nation, and as such we must always be on the look-out for new markets and new partners to work with. That includes those countries where we have to help develop and foster the conditions necessary for business to flourish.
It is in our national interest to encourage the growth of developing countries by unlocking the enormous potential of the private sectors in those countries. By encouraging business growth, we are turning those who receive state aid into key trading partners. Investment in developing countries brings them into our markets, as we now see across Asia and Africa. For example, our programme to support Rwandan agriculture has transformed the industry from a subsistence-based activity into one that is commercially oriented. With help from DFID, the Rwandan Government have collected greater tax revenues, which has meant that Rwanda’s dependency on foreign aid has declined. The Rwandan Government’s spending on education and healthcare programmes has trebled as a result of the revenues they have collected. Bilateral trade in goods between the UK and Rwanda exceeded £10 million in 2012, and UK exports to Rwanda totalled £7 million. The top exports included power-generating machinery, medicinal and pharmaceutical products, and general industrial machinery.
It is vital that we get the world’s young into work for their own dignity and personal development as well as their economic future. In so many places in the world, we see the consequences of young people feeling that they have no future because of conflict or migration, but where people have the opportunity to support themselves and their families, we see greater stability. That in turn encourages greater business development and attracts more investment.
The UK can be proud of its involvement in the millennium development goals, which significantly improve the livelihoods of billions of people. In particular, the UK’s action on development goal 8 has meant that, between 2000 and 2014, bilateral aid to the least developed countries fell by 16% in real terms, while 79% of imports from developing countries entered developed countries duty-free.
Globally, the population covered by 2G grew from 58% in 2001 to 95% in 2015, and anyone who has travelled in developing countries can see that even the poorest individual now has a mobile phone. Internet use has grown from 6% of the world’s population in 2000 to more than 40% in 2015, and 3.2 billion people are now linked to the content and applications that we can access here in the UK.
Those achievements in internet provision, coupled with the ready availability of technology, mean that people are seeing the quality of life in the developed world, so it should come as no surprise that the UK is a popular destination for those who have the skills and qualifications to get themselves here. Technology has vastly improved all our lives, and the opportunities for developing countries are even greater. Developing countries and businesses based there have leapfrogged obsolete technologies, which has allowed them to take advantage of the same level of technology that we enjoy. That has also placed on us a need to accelerate our programmes and ensure that as the expectations of those who live in developing countries rise, so do the opportunities available to them.
A lack of sustainable jobs, and livelihoods that fall below expectations, threaten to undermine our progress on the wider goals of tackling poverty. Unless we address that problem, we will continue to drain away the most educated individuals from the communities that need them most. As of April last year, about 80,000 doctors registered in the UK had obtained their primary medical qualification outside the UK. Many of them qualified in India, Pakistan, South Africa and Nigeria. In effect, developing countries are paying to train doctors for our health service. We have a high demand for doctors, but taking them from the world’s developing countries is counterproductive and not sustainable. Our foreign aid and investment in business development will not see real results unless we create an environment in which aspirational people see their future in their own communities.
A UN report highlighted that 780 million people in the world are earning less than $2 a day, which is the UN development goals’ definition of absolute poverty. We know that society as a whole benefits when more people are contributing towards their country’s growth, but employment must be worth while and rewarding. That is why it was so important that the UN reaffirmed its commitment to the principles of the global development goals in 2015. We will continue to build on what we have achieved.
We have committed to ensuring that everyone can enjoy prosperous and fulfilling lives by 2030 through the creation of sustainable jobs and by sharing the benefits of technology. Our business development spending must continue to be directed towards developing countries, helping them to build their economies and develop themselves. Continuing with that programme contributes significantly to our wider goals of eradicating poverty and conflict. It is essential that we make that one of our major focuses for the next 15 years and beyond.
Foreign Aid Expenditure
Flick Drummond Excerpts(7 years, 10 months ago)
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Mrs Flick Drummond (Portsmouth South) (Con)
Our commitment to overseas aid was a manifesto commitment that I supported wholeheartedly, having been brought up in developing countries for the first 20 years of my life. It is our responsibility as one of the world’s largest and most prosperous economies to help those in need and those in danger of exploitation. We should feel a sense of pride and involvement in the amount of aid that we deliver and the benefits it brings, but obviously we need to do more at home to explain exactly how our aid is delivered, because sadly now it has become a target for the press. However, it is also important that we debate these issues, because we must always ensure that public money is well spent and directed to the right ends.
In fact, 86% of people believe in the importance of overseas aid. We are debating this petition because it has crossed the threshold of support, but I personally receive far more correspondence supporting the work of the Department for International Development than correspondence attempting to undermine it.
The work that we have done with Rwanda shows that even the most chaotic states can get on the road to recovery with the right intervention, and Britain has been the birthplace of many of the world’s most important charitable and voluntary organisations. Those organisations are key partners of DFID in delivering aid, as well as raising funds themselves.
However, this issue is never just about spending money; it is also about deploying British expertise that has been built up over decades. We are a trading nation. We must always be on the look-out for new markets and new partners to deal with. The investment in developing countries brings them into our markets, as we can see now across Asia. It is also vital that we get the world’s young into work, for their own dignity and personal development as well as for their economic future.
With the rise of the internet, people in poorer counties can see the lifestyle that we enjoy here in the developed world and it is no surprise that they want to migrate here. By developing other countries, we also help to prevent the large amount of migration that is denuding countries of their most valuable resource—their informed and educated population. Our foreign aid must be directed towards building the economies of developing countries and it must continue to do so until it is no longer needed.
Oral Answers to Questions
Flick Drummond Excerpts(8 years, 2 months ago)
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Justine Greening
The right hon. Lady will be pleased to hear that we work directly with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees on improving registration, so that we do not lose people, including children, who have arrived. Then, of course, we have done a huge amount of work with the Red Cross to make sure that people have access to some of the basics they need when they make it over to Europe. She can be proud of the work the UK is doing, but the bulk of it is, of course, in the region itself, which is overwhelmingly where people and refugees want to stay—close to home.
Mrs Flick Drummond (Portsmouth South) (Con)
Justine Greening
The elections are an important step towards greater democracy and provide a chance to support inclusive growth in Burma. We are supporting improvements in the business climate, including in the financial sector, and we are helping to increase agricultural productivity, to diversify livelihoods and encourage more private sector investment in infrastructure.
Oral Answers to Questions
Flick Drummond Excerpts(8 years, 9 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Grant Shapps)
I do not recognise the hon. Gentleman’s figures. We provide £72 million, plus another £10 million from the UK taxpayer through the Scottish Government, and that is just in bilateral aid; of course, there are then the multilateral and international programmes. In total, it probably adds up to more than £150 million to Malawi.
Mrs Flick Drummond (Portsmouth South) (Con)
T3. On Monday, the British ambassador to Yemen said that 6 million Yemenis were on the verge of complete starvation. In the light of the ongoing commercial blockade of fuels and supplies to Yemen and the failure of the Geneva talks, what discussions are the Government having with the Saudi Arabian-led coalition to stop the violence and meet the increasingly desperate humanitarian need?
Justine Greening
My hon. Friend is right to highlight the dire situation faced by millions of people living in Yemen. We are now urging the Governments of Saudi Arabia and Yemen to work with the UN so that we can get commercial shipping through a new inspections regime and have more humanitarian pauses during Ramadan.
Oral Answers to Questions
Flick Drummond Excerpts(8 years, 11 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
I welcome the hon. Lady to her place and congratulate her on her election success. The first question she asks is about fiscal responsibility and sustainability. I take that as a sign of progress. I would say to her: there is a leadership election on, throw your hat in the ring. In that one question she has made more sense than all the rest of them put together—go for it!
Mrs Flick Drummond (Portsmouth South) (Con)
Q7. A push for greater diversity in employment is a key part of my plan for Portsmouth. Can the Prime Minister assure my constituents that the leasing of part of the dockyard to Magma Structures will be confirmed in due course, as we look forward to welcoming yet another high-tech company to the city?
The Prime Minister
First, may I congratulate my hon. Friend on her election success and on standing up already for Portsmouth, on all the work she did as a candidate and all the things I know she will do as a Member of Parliament? We are absolutely committed to ensuring that the Portsmouth ship hall is used in the most effective way to deliver capability, to create jobs and to boost growth in the region. The developments in Portsmouth at the moment are exciting, whether in ship servicing, welcoming the carriers when they come to Portsmouth or the Ben Ainslie centre that is being constructed with Government support. May I just say how good it is that Portsmouth is going to be represented in this place by strong Conservative women?