argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill — House of Lords, 2015-02-06
Topic: International Affairs
Michael Bruce Forsyth (Conservative, Centre-right): If ever I am on a charge, I will make sure my noble and learned friend is there to defend me. If we are to look at the operation of a target and what its effect would be, I draw the House’s attention to the report of the National Audit Office published on 15 January this year. I do not know how many noble Lords have read the report but I very much hope that those who feel that they wish to support the Bill in the present form will take the opportunity to do so. The report, Managing the Official Development Assistance Target, is about how practical it is to have a target and what the management problems relating to it are. I hope that the noble Countess will accept that I am speaking very closely to the amendment I should apologise that I did not speak at Second Reading. I was here for it, but we were limited to five minutes at Second Reading to discuss this important Bill, and I felt that I should make way to let others have a little more time.
International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill — House of Lords, 2015-02-06
Topic: International Affairs
Michael Bruce Forsyth (Conservative, Centre-right): I am sorry that the noble Lord does not seem to accept my word on that Anyway, to the findings reached by the National Audit Office. It said: "Assessing whether the Department has met the target is made more difficult by changes in the calculation of gross national income" In fact, "the Department published 4 values for the ratio of ODA spending to gross national income, ranging from 0.67% to 0.72% depending on how gross national income is calculated" We need to be very careful about what we mean by a target, because even the department found itself wrestling with four different numbers The NAO also found: "The government’s specification of its aid target and international reporting rules present the Department with challenges for managing its budget and spending. The requirement to hit, but not significantly exceed, aid spending equal to 0.7% of gross national income every calendar year means the Department has to hit a fairly narrow target against a background of considerable uncertainty. In addition, it has to manage its finances around a December and a March year end; use latest economic forecasts to predict the level of ODA required to meet 0.7%; monitor and forecast other departments’ ODA; and adjust its spending to reflect changing forecasts" In other words, the effect of "a" target or "the" target is to present the department with, in effect, having two financial years: one the calendar year and the other the financial year. That means that it would be half way through the calendar year at the start of a new financial year, trying to work out how it will meet the target The NAO also said: "The Department’s spending forecasts for 2013 had weaknesses, making it more difficult for the Department to manage delivery of the ODA target" In addition, it said: "To achieve the target and manage its budget the Department had to quickly add some activities to its 2013 plans but delay others set for 2014, making it more difficult to achieve value for money" That is an independent view of the effect of having a target. It has nothing whatever to do with whether or not you think that the Government should spend roughly 0.7% of our gross national income on development aid; it is about the effect of specifying a target The NAO states: "The Department added activities at short notice in 2013 which constrained choice" I could go through the whole of the report—
International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill — House of Lords, 2015-02-06
Topic: International Affairs
Michael Bruce Forsyth (Conservative, Centre-right): The noble Countess says no. I could go through the whole of the report strengthening the point about targets. I am picking up only headline points. For example: "The Department added activities at short notice in 2013 which constrained choice … The activities the Department added in 2013 reduced its available budget at the start of 2014, and contributed to the delay of some of its planned activities" What that means is that the fact that it had been given a statutory target meant that some people in desperate need around the world had their projects cancelled because of the financial management difficulties imposed by having a target The NAO also found: "The limited flexibility in the target led to the Department rescheduling payments in 2013, first to increase outturn, and then to reduce it … The Department phased its contributions to 2 key multilateral organisations to increase 2013 ODA".
International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill — House of Lords, 2015-02-06
Topic: International Affairs
Michael Bruce Forsyth (Conservative, Centre-right): No, she has not, because if she had read the report she would not have made that intervention. The problem arises because the target of 0.7% is over a calendar year, so from January to December it is necessary to reach 0.7%, but the department’s budget period runs from April. Therefore, it is trying to manage programmes in respect of one financial year against a target set over a different financial year. The reason for that is because the Government are trying to set an example to other countries by meeting what they believe to be the UN target, which is measured over the calendar year in order to get equivalence The effect of that is that the unfortunate civil servants in DfID find themselves having to organise the budget with those two financial years. Even then, it is further complicated by the fact that only 82% of that budget is within the control of the department, because another bit of the budget is spent on environmental measures and another is spent by the Foreign Office, over which it has no control, so the civil servants have to find out what is happening in those other departments. The effect is that they end up shuffling money or writing cheques to multilateral organisations to meet the target when they should be concentrating on using the available resources efficiently and effectively to do the best for people in abject poverty around the world I know that the noble Baroness and others think that this is some kind of exercise to try to stop the Bill. I do not wish to stop the Bill, but I wish it to operate in a way that ensures value for money for the taxpayer and that projects around the globe are properly supported, not subject to some last-minute financial juggling in order to meet a ridiculous, but no doubt well intentioned, target in the Bill The amendment which my noble friend Lord Lawson was trying to move—the House was very discourteous to him over that—draws attention to that. The very same point was made two years ago by the Economic Affairs Committee unanimously, with all-party support—
International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill — House of Lords, 2015-02-06
Topic: International Affairs
Peter Fowler (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, perhaps I may make a short intervention arising from the comments of my noble friend Lord Forsyth and that of the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, when he said that we are not talking in this debate about humanitarian aid. It is of course true that only part of the budget goes to humanitarian aid, but it is a vital part and we cannot just turn our backs upon it. My noble friend Lord Forsyth talked about the National Audit Office report, which I have read, and last-minute financial juggling, but I think that is entirely unfair where DfID is concerned, and I will tell him why. The majority of that money went to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. It was entirely vital that it went to that fund, because around the world there are 3.5 million deaths a year, so I hope at any rate that all those who have spoken today, including those in favour of this amendment, would agree that that was worthwhile expenditure. The idea that—
International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill — House of Lords, 2015-02-06
Topic: International Affairs
Peter Fowler (Conservative, Centre-right): Let me go on, if I may, because we have just heard the noble Lord. If he will just be patient, then I will let him in. The noble Lord said that this was rushed out in March. To my knowledge, and as far as the Global Fund contribution was concerned, it was anything but rushed out in March. It was in fact previewed and promised by the previous Secretary of State. It has been on the books now for the last two years. The fact that it came out in March does not mean that the Secretary of State had a sudden rush of blood to the head and said, "Right, I’m going to give half a billion pounds to the Global Fund"; it meant that there was a process of careful consideration. It concerns me that that position should have been misstated. That is the reality of much of the aid money that we are talking about. Apart from development, which my noble friend Lord Howell spoke about, we are also talking about these issues.
International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill — House of Lords, 2015-02-06
Topic: Macroeconomics
Michael Bruce Forsyth (Conservative, Centre-right): I am most grateful to my noble friend. When I used the phrase "the money had been rushed out", I was not quoting directly. My source was Margaret Hodge, who is chairman of the Public Accounts Committee. She concluded that it appeared that cash has been "rushed out" to meet the 0.7% target, and added: "This raises questions about value for money which Parliament will be keen to look into".
International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill — House of Lords, 2015-02-06
Topic: Macroeconomics
Michael Bruce Forsyth (Conservative, Centre-right): When my noble friend says that I am wrong to say that it was rushed out, does he acknowledge that 40% of the budget was spent in November and December 2013, December being the year end? Surely that points to a justification for what I said.
International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill — House of Lords, 2015-02-06
Topic: Macroeconomics
Archibald Gavin Hamilton (Conservative, Centre-right): Can my noble friend comment on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Butler, about hypothecation? Is he quite comfortable about slabs of government expenditure being hypothecated so that there is no flexibility at all on behalf of the Treasury?
International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill — House of Lords, 2015-02-06
Topic: International Affairs
Peter Fowler (Conservative, Centre-right): I am, in fact, comfortable in this position, because I think that we have a particular duty as far as the developing world is concerned. I would not be happy to have hypothecation in every government measure, but here we have a particular responsibility. There is a lack of imagination about what is happening out there in Africa and in the rest of the world. That is the point. If we have a duty, it is a duty in this respect. I am therefore entirely happy with hypothecation in this respect.
International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill — House of Lords, 2015-02-06
Topic: Macroeconomics
William Trimble (Conservative, Centre-right): I am not going to quibble with 0.7%, nor with the idea of the target. However, will the noble Lord address the question about putting a statutory target down and the problems that then arise from the inflexibility of that? The target itself, if you just think of the concept of a target, contains the notion of flexibility. That is the issue that is at stake here: putting down a target that is inflexible and the consequences that follow from that.
International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill — House of Lords, 2015-02-06
Topic: International Affairs
Nigel Lawson (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, we have had an interesting debate so far. I would like to reply to some of the points that have been made, not least by my noble friend Lord Purvis, who has just sat down. First, though, I thank the noble Lord the Lord Chairman of Committees for his very helpful clarification of precisely what it is that we are debating in this amendment. The question of the amendment goes deeper, though, because what it is about—some of the later amendments are also about this—is introducing a degree of flexibility into the Bill. The reasons why that is necessary have been set out very well by the noble Lord, Lord Butler, and my noble friend Lord MacGregor It is quite impossible to debate this amendment without explaining why it is that, for a good Government, a degree of flexibility is necessary. The fact is that the 0.7% target is an anachronism. As my noble friend Lord Purvis mentioned, it was set in 1970, but the world has changed dramatically since then. What has changed it most is, in a word, globalisation: that is to say, the huge increase in both trade flows, which are the most important aspects for the developing world—I am strongly in favour of reducing barriers to imports from the developing world; that is what it needs and that is what we should do for it—and the huge increase in private capital flows, which my noble friend Lord Howell mentioned, and which are vital. Today, totally unlike the case in 1970, ODA is only 1/10th of the total amount of capital flows to the developing world. As the distinguished development economist Paul Collier said in evidence to us, aid is now "almost a sideshow", although as my noble friend Lord Forsyth and others, and indeed our report, have pointed out, it has a much bigger effect on the extent of corruption in the developing world, for which the evidence is incontrovertible. One noble Lord has already mentioned the report by the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee on the so-called Private Infrastructure Development Group, which was produced this week in only the latest example There is a more fundamental problem about the 0.7% target, and it is development aid. I should respond to the very impassioned contribution from my noble friend Lord Fowler: this is not about humanitarian aid. As I said in my opening remarks, I believe that the case for increasing humanitarian aid is strong. This is about so-called development aid, aid for economic development, which is 90% of the DfID budget while humanitarian aid is a tiny part. Humanitarian aid needs the support of Governments; it is not exclusively for them, as charities and churches do good work in this area, but it is still a very strong responsibility of government, whereas capital flows, as my noble friend Lord Howell said, are now overwhelmingly private capital flows. The 0.7% target is therefore completely obsolete. That is no doubt why no other major country has the slightest intention of observing it. The G7, which consists of the major economies of the world—
International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill — House of Lords, 2015-02-06
Topic: International Affairs
Nigel Lawson (Conservative, Centre-right): This is the necessary background to the amendment. I repeat what my noble friend Lord MacGregor said: it is not my intention to go over this in the course of subsequent amendments. If it is felt better to take more time in subsequent amendments—if that is the will of the House—I will do so, but that is not my intention. I think it is more coherent, a more efficient use of time and more helpful to the House if the argument is made on this, the first amendment that we are discussing today As I say, I know that the noble Countess obviously does not want to hear this, but I am afraid that it is a fact that in the G7 countries, the amount of aid that the other six give ranges from 0.4% in the case of France and Germany to 0.2% in the case of Italy and the United States. None of them has the slightest intention of increasing that, and certainly they have no intention of making it legally binding.
International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill — House of Lords, 2015-02-06
Topic: Macroeconomics
Michael Bruce Forsyth (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I rise to support my noble friend’s amendment. It may seem a nitpicking point to distinguish between GDP and GNI—the noble Baroness on the Front Bench says, "Yes, it is". But I suspect that that is because she does not know the difference between them, because if she did know the difference she would know that it was not a nitpicking point.
International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill — House of Lords, 2015-02-06
Topic: Macroeconomics
Michael Bruce Forsyth (Conservative, Centre-right): Well, I have been on the receiving end of a certain amount of abuse, and this is a very important point. As my noble friend has indicated, the difference between GDP and GNI for the United Kingdom is limited. But in support of the United Kingdom being in the van and being ahead of virtually every other OECD country in committing itself to a target of 0.7% of GNI, the proponents of that policy have argued that other countries—I think that there are five—have set an example. One of those countries is Luxembourg. The difference between GDP and GNI is that, for a country such as Luxembourg, which appears to meet the target very generously, the GNI is considerably higher than the GDP, because the GNI includes revenues that are repatriated from the country to outside. So if you set a target that is based on GNI, it gives anywhere that is a tax haven a huge advantage in meeting the target as opposed to countries that are not—and I thought that Members opposite were rather against tax havens and making life easier for tax havens. I cannot give the exact figure, but I would estimate that, if we take into account the moneys going through Luxembourg through multinational companies and going back to the United States and elsewhere, instead of more than meeting the target, I suspect that it is less than halfway towards it. This is not a nitpicking point. It is an important point. It is important because, as I said earlier—I am not going to repeat the argument—when the target was originally set by the UN, it was for GDP.
International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill — House of Lords, 2015-02-06
Topic: International Affairs
David Arthur Russell Howell (Conservative, Centre-right): This is a sensible change proposed by my noble friend Lord Tugendhat. It would obviously put the Bill, which we want to improve and strengthen, on to a less wobbly basis. There is an enormous debate going on in the economic world and, indeed, in the international scene generally about the nature of GNI. Colleagues will recall, certainly in the last year, or less than a year ago, that the British suddenly found that their budget contribution to the EU budget jumped by the most enormous amount. That was related directly back to redefinitions of our national wealth, product and income. The ONS redefined our national GNI as including various illegal activities and grey and black market activities—and I think, although I may be corrected, on prostitution as well. It made some assessments, which vastly increased our national figure. Instantly we were charged an extra several hundred million—was it even a billion?—for the EU budget. This is dangerous ground. It would be enormously sensible for those who want to see this Bill in place and have an effect to get a better, less shaky basis for it There is of course the additional point that if the 0.7% figure rose as a result of GNI rising by these slightly controversial means—I do not think this point has found favour in the House but I beg your Lordships to try to look at it—it would take resources away and put them into ODA, which, as we recognise, is a decreasingly relevant part of the development driver process. That would deprive areas where we want to see development, such as the technology to reduce energy costs, which are crucifying developing countries. We want money to be spent there and on all sorts of technological improvements, which will bring development. We want money to go into defining the law on property ownership, which Hernando de Soto has said is the key consideration in enabling developing societies to develop These are the things for which we feel quite passionate. To see money diverted into areas that are not promoting development, even if they add to the aid budget, is not good for this country, our pride and our development power, and it is taking the wrong turning. This is a small but sensible amendment, which I hope will be accepted without demur.
International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill — House of Lords, 2015-02-06
Topic: Macroeconomics
Archibald Gavin Hamilton (Conservative, Centre-right): I very much support my noble friend Lord Tugendhat’s amendment. In the spirit of my noble friend Lord Cormack, I certainly do not intend to speak for very long The first point that my noble friend Lord Tugendhat made was one of transparency. He made the point, quite rightly, that we measure everything else in terms of GDP rather than GNI. If we want to take the public with us it seems to me to be very sensible to use GDP rather than GNI. Let us be honest: the reason why people support this Bill with the enthusiasm they do is because they want to be seen to be generous with other people’s money. We all like people to be generous with their own money; it is slightly different when they are being generous with other people’s money. As that is the purpose of the Bill, we might as well make it as clear as we possibly can by using GDP rather than GNI My noble friend Lord Tugendhat also made the point that the difference between GNI and GDP is very small at the moment. In that case, this is a unique and wonderful opportunity to use GDP instead of GNI before the two indices start to part from each other. We have no idea what might happen in the future; the economy of this country may change and it may well be that we start getting less money if GNI starts to increase above GDP If we really want to nail this down, I say to my noble friend the Minister that this is a wonderful opportunity to embrace the amendment and get it on GDP, which everybody understands. That also means that we then guarantee that the 0.7% figure means something in the future, if that is what the Bill and the House desire.
International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill — House of Lords, 2015-02-06
Topic: International Affairs
Michael Bruce Forsyth (Conservative, Centre-right): I think my noble friend would acknowledge that the target originally set by the UN was GDP. This is a genuine question: could she explain to the House when and why it was changed from GDP to GNI on an international basis and why it is necessary for us to adopt GNI, given the implications that that would have in future, as my noble friend pointed out, of possibly less money being available and less certainty?
International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill — House of Lords, 2015-02-06
Topic: International Affairs
Michael Bruce Forsyth (Conservative, Centre-right): What are we doing here? Are we passing law that affects what the United Kingdom will do in terms of its contribution to overseas aid, making that as stable a target as possible, or are we using legislation to make some declaratory statement about what we are doing internationally? It is very important to recognise the difference between the two. As the mover of this Bill, is my noble friend really saying that he prefers a measure that enables countries such as Luxembourg to appear to meet the target, whereas if they were subject to GDP they would have to contribute almost twice as much? Is he really saying that he is happy with that situation?