Foreign Aid Expenditure

Toby Perkins Excerpts

Monday 13th June 2016 Westminster Hall

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mr Wilson. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) on introducing this debate and on his excellent speech. There have been many excellent speeches; in fact, I am honoured to follow a very good one.

Across the House the word “pride” is mentioned constantly. Of course it is a source of huge pride that our country delivers this spending target, and that is absolutely right. I have not visited many of the international development projects that other Members have referred to, but I trust what they say entirely. Turning to my experience, my wife and I were in the Sri Lankan tsunami. It was Boxing day and I was standing on a beach when it came in. The very next day, someone with whom I had been swimming in the sea the day before—who confessed he was a Chelsea headhunter—got a box, put it in the middle of the restaurant area and said to every western tourist, “Put every penny you have got into there.” He was British. The British are good at this: we raise money, we are passionate about charitable giving, and I agree with that.

I accept that there is an overwhelming governmental mandate for this policy and I welcome the consensus across the House, but my concern is that there is a danger of complacency. We have a very large current account deficit in this country and a persisting public expenditure deficit in terms of public borrowing. Of course I have immense trust in the predictions of our Chancellor, not least in terms of the outcome of certain decisions we might be making shortly—unlike some—and I am sure we will go back into the black soon, but what if we do not and these issues persist? My personal view is that I would like there to be some consideration, when we protect Government budgets, that we do so on the understanding that some of it comes from a surplus. In other words, that it is clear we can afford it and that we are not borrowing the money and putting charitable spending on a credit card, which worries me.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

I do not want to turn this into a political debate because it has been remarkably consensual, but let me tell the hon. Gentleman that I and many of my colleagues could give him a whole list of alternative things that we think the Government could make different decisions about rather than aid spending. He can wait for the Government to be at a point where they can say, “These are now lavish times: these are times when we are actually going to afford for children not to die of diarrhoea or afford for them to go to school,” but we will never reach that moment. He is arguing for the end of aid spending, not something else.

[James Cartlidge]

It is a political debate, and we have to debate this issue. Of course I am not arguing for the end of aid spending; that is a ludicrous thing to say. Japan, the United States, Italy, Portugal and Spain are not international pariahs and they spend 0.2% of their GDP on aid. That is disappointing, but that is a £8.5 billion difference. When we make a choice in this country to protect DFID when there is a deficit, it is a statement of fact that we will inevitably impose tougher reductions on other Departments. That means things like social care and long-term care of the elderly; we have to be open and honest about that.

That is my concern, especially in this political climate. The hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes), who is not in the Chamber any more, made the point that she had constituents who were concerned because we have food banks. Many years ago Charles Dickens wrote about telescopic philanthropy: the perception in humanitarian spending that we are prioritising the problems abroad rather than those at home. In those areas where there is an anger at politics and a feeling of disengagement—I fear I know how some of those people will be expressing that shortly—and in this climate we have to be very open and transparent. We have to show the public that we are debating these things and are prudent in our use of public finances.