Foreign Aid Expenditure

Jeremy Lefroy Excerpts

Monday 13th June 2016 Westminster Hall

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

I refer to my entries in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Almost all the work that I have seen carried out with the support of DFID tackles individual poverty. It also supports global public goods, which is in the interests of us all. As the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford) mentioned earlier, if we take our foot off the gas with diseases such as polio, malaria or neglected tropical diseases, the tremendous work done over the last 15 or 20 years will be undone. We must continue it.

The same is true of the work on water and sanitation referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce). DFID’s work has reached 60 million people over the past four years—vulnerable people in remote rural areas and the most difficult of circumstances. We have heard about the work with Syrian refugees who can have an education as a result of the work funded by DFID. Just two or three months ago, the International Development Committee saw the tremendous work being done with children in the north of Nigeria to ensure that they have an education fit for the 21st century, and last year we saw forestry work done over more than 20 years in Nepal, increasing forestation there by around 15%. That is important in tackling climate change.

I want to mention five ways in which DFID could look for improvement. The first is always, where possible, to consider the use of returnable capital instead of grants. In many cases, grants are most appropriate, but in many other cases, particularly involving work with the private sector, it would be better to use concessional lending or returnable capital, which can then be recycled.

The second is maximum leverage. We find, for instance on health, that many of the countries where we work committed in Abuja in 2001 to spend 15% of their budgets on health, but are nowhere near that at the moment. If we can connect the work that we do with them with reaching the target that they themselves set, we will get tremendous leverage from our spending.

The third, mentioned by the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), is effective partners such as BRAC. If we can use effective, low-cost partners that are prepared to work in difficult circumstances, we will find that our aid goes much further.

The fourth is to encourage the backing of small grants. Often, as hon. Members have mentioned, grants aimed at organisations working from our own constituencies can do a tremendous amount of good, perhaps matching the money that we raise locally. DFID says that that is sometimes too difficult for it to do.

Finally, DFID needs to be more rigorous in planning and more efficient in spending. There is much more work to be done on that.