Spending Review 2020

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Thursday 3rd December 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I will talk about overseas aid. First, I congratulate the Government on breaking the link with the hypothecation of government revenues, which is a bad idea in principle and has been proved to be a bad idea by the challenges that face the Chancellor at the moment.

I will speak more broadly about overseas aid. It has had a very chequered history. Much money has been wasted, there has been a lack of accountability, and indeed in places there has been abuse, as we saw with the abuse of young girls in Haiti by Oxfam. It is time that we looked radically at the whole question of overseas aid and made sure that it is more accountable to the people of this country.

I would like to see the overseas aid budget fundamentally abolished, either in part or in whole, and the money paid to people who make contributions to charity. At the moment, if I write a cheque for £100 to UNICEF, UNICEF ends up with £120 because of the 20% extra that it is given by the Exchequer. I would like to see that increased substantially. I do not know how the figures would work out, but if my £100 to UNICEF became, say, £500, there would be an enormous incentive for people to make contributions, and indeed there would be a quite massive increase in the amount of money going to our charities that help out around the world. This would transfer power from the Government to the people who make the contributions; it would make the charitable organisations working in overseas aid much more accountable to the people; and in my opinion it would encourage many more people to pay towards these charities, knowing that their contributions would be so massively increased.

Finally, I will just say that I am not expecting my noble friend the Minister to comment on this in any way whatever—but I hope that he will take it away and think about it in the Treasury.