Oral Answers to Questions

James Duddridge Excerpts

Tuesday 30th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Taiwo Owatemi (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

Whether the Government plan to ring-fence the budget for official development assistance in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (James Duddridge)]

We continue to spend 0.7% of our gross national income on aid, and that is enshrined in law. We will continue to be guided by the International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Act 2015, including a commitment to spending on reducing poverty, and we believe we will be stronger in that aim as one Department.

[Bambos Charalambous]

The Secretary of State will soon be responsible for a sizeable amount of official development aid, so can the Minister confirm that the Secretary of State for the future FCDO will be bound by the same rules for aid spending as the current International Development Secretary, including the four key Acts of Parliament that currently govern international development?

[James Duddridge]

Yes.

[Ruth Cadbury]

Those with long memories will remember the Pergau dam scandal of the 1990s, where the High Court found that the Government had unlawfully provided aid in exchange for a lucrative arms contract. That was one reason why the Labour Government made the Department for International Development a separate and independent Department from the Foreign Office. What steps will the Government be taking to ensure that we do not see a repeat of the Pergau dam scandal in the future?

[James Duddridge]

We do not need a separate Department to learn lessons from the past, but that type of transaction would be wholly inappropriate and would not happen under this ministerial team.

[Taiwo Owatemi]

The UK is rightly proud of its commitment to spend 0.7% of GDP on international aid. The decision by the Government to merge these Departments has been met with criticism by some world-leading international development charities. Former Prime Ministers have also criticised the decision, with David Cameron describing it as a “mistake”. Our international aid commitment can and does save lives, so will the Minister confirm that the budget for international aid will be ring-fenced within a future Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office?

[James Duddridge]

We are bound by law to spend 0.7%, so it is not a choice; it is in the law, and we will obey the law. I was one of David Cameron’s Ministers in the Foreign Office in that period, and I found a lack of joined-up thinking. I worked well with DFID, but I think this will work better as one Department and it has already worked better with a Joint Minister.

[Douglas Chapman (Dunfermline and West Fife) (SNP) [V]]

A good friend of the all-party group on Yemen is the UN’s Sir Mark Lowcock, who this week described the massive child malnutrition crisis in Yemen as leaving a nation on a precipice. The UK earns 10 times as much from arms sales in the region as we spend on aid to Yemen. Since I was elected in 2015, I have lost count of the number of the Foreign Secretary’s predecessors I have questioned on this issue. Will this British Foreign Secretary be the first to stop the UK being part of the problem? Will he agree with me and ensure that the UK becomes part of the solution? How much will he commit to Yemeni aid today? Foreign Secretary, time is of the essence.