UK Foreign Aid Programme — House of Lords, 2021-07-01
Topic: International Affairs
Peter Fowler (Independent, Unknown): My Lords, I thank my Cross-Bench colleagues for the opportunity of this debate. I also declare my interest as an ambassador for UNAIDS In 2015, Parliament passed a Bill that placed a duty on Governments to devote 0.7% of national income to overseas aid. It was approved overwhelmingly in both Houses. My comment at Second Reading in this House was that it was "what I would expect from a civilised and outward-looking country that recognises it has responsibilities to try to help the poorest people in other parts of the world".—[Official Report, 23/1/15; col. 1530.] I would suggest that our responsibilities remain the same today. I also suggest that in spite of the examples of corruption in the use of aid money, which I deplore as the lowest form of crime, the effort of the world through the help of Governments and the United Nations, together with the wonderful support of charitable organisations, volunteers, doctors and nurses, and countless others, has led to major steps forward No one pretends that the battle is remotely over. We have edged forward but there is still a mountain to climb. Take, for example, HIV/AIDS. The latest figures show that almost 700,000 men, women and children around the world died from AIDS-related illnesses last year. There are 38 million people around the world living with HIV. In sub-Saharan Africa, women and girls account for 60% of all new infections and we know that if girls leave school early before the secondary stage, their chances of having HIV are doubled However, that terrible toll is not remotely an isolated case. It is extraordinarily difficult to express in a few words the magnitude of the full challenge or to grasp the full implication of the cut from 0.7% that the Government have ordered. There are the problems concerned with the Global Fund to End Modern Slavery, raised in the other place by the former Prime Minister Mrs May, which include programmes to end the commercial exploitation of children. Our funding there is being cut by 80%. Incidentally, together with Mrs May, three other former Prime Ministers have condemned the cuts in foreign aid The present Prime Minister declares a personal priority for aid in girls’ education but that aid has been cut while aid to UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund, has been cut by 60%. Among the multitude of other programmes suffering cuts in UK aid, which are sometimes total, are a project to provide healthcare in deprived areas of Bangladesh, help for clean water projects in Africa and, my own particular cause, UNAIDS, which has had its grant cut by 83%. Even funding for Yemen, which has the world’s worst humanitarian emergency, has been cut back, and we will doubtless hear from the noble Lord, Lord Herbert, on the position with TB, perhaps the world’s biggest killer It is for reasons such as those that every country, bar one, inside the G7 group of the most prosperous nations in the world has decided not to cut back their aid programmes. The one exception is, of course, Britain, which until now has taken pride in its efforts to help the poorest and the sick, and rightly so. However, the Treasury says now that the financial circumstances of the country explain the cut. I would find that argument easier to accept if I did not remember that back in 2015, long before Covid, it was the Treasury that was most passionately opposed to this international Act. Its argument then was that it was wrong to ring-fence this small part of its budget and that the matter should be left to the discretion of the Chancellor—exactly what the Treasury is now achieving. Back in 2015, its objection was debated and, crucially, in Parliament it was decisively rejected What makes these cuts so objectionable, even to those who might have supported the economic case, is that Parliament today has had no opportunity to vote on the issue at all. An Act of Parliament has been changed by ministerial decree. There is a gigantic issue of principle here that no true parliamentarian can ignore. In the other place, Andrew Mitchell, the MP for Sutton Coldfield, made a brave attempt to force the matter to a vote and I pay tribute to him. I am tempted to say that Sutton Coldfield does well in electing its MPs to the House of Commons. Today in this House, we have a debate with more than 40 speakers who, as we have heard, are confined to a strict two minutes each. It shows the strength of opinion but, again, there is no prospect of a vote That fundamental criticism was immensely strengthened by none other than Mr Speaker in the other place. He said that he shared "the House’s frustration" at its failure to be able to make an effective decision on the Government’s action. It was not just Parliament, he said, but the country as a whole that, "needs this matter to be debated and aired, and an effective decision to be taken".—[Official Report, Commons, 7/6/21; col. 668.] Frankly, the parliamentary process has so far proved to be ineffective. It is for that reason that many of us are now looking at other remedies. That remedy may lie in the law itself and an examination of a basic question: whether the action taken by Ministers is fundamentally lawful Let us remember that the Government agreed with the advice that they needed legislation to change the position. On 25 November last year, the Chancellor of the Exchequer said that from the Dispatch Box, and the Foreign Secretary said the same thing the very next day, 26 November. They spelled out the reduction from 0.7% but forgot to mention, perhaps, the reduction provided for in the Bill itself automatically with the reduction in national income. On the promise of legislation, all that changed some months later when the Government announced that, after further reflection—which is their way of saying that the Chief Whips had told them that they were in danger of being defeated—they did not actually need legislation at all. They said that all they had to do was make a statement—a point raised in this House by my noble and learned friend Lord Judge and the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed. The form of statement is, to put it mildly, unclear. A Written Answer might suffice, or perhaps just a letter. Parliamentary accountability has come to this Another fundamental question and criticism has come from the former Solicitor-General, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, who will also speak in this debate. He argued that, until Parliament changes the law, there is a statutory duty to meet the 0.7% target. The Government can say that they intend to change the law but, until that is done, they are subject to it. They cannot legitimise their failure to hit a target by announcing in advance their intention to fail In short, there are legal options open to us to challenge these cuts. The difficulty, of course, is that they will take time. In my view, the best outcome is for this to be settled in Parliament. The Government should recognise that aid organisations today face unique and urgent problems, partly because of Covid. How much better it would be for the Government to recognise that reality and change course. The issues of poverty and lack of health provision remain the same; the difference is that, with the onset of Covid, they have become even more acute One of the most powerful letters I have received during this crisis came from a young British doctor who had been working for several years in Sierra Leone. He quoted the experience of his successor. She had said to him: "Pretty much every one of our funding sources has been cut entirely overnight with no notice. It is hard to overstate how catastrophic this will be to our patients in Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somaliland. From the infectious diseases unit we built with UK funding as a first line of defence against pandemics to the oxygen factory we built to provide life-saving treatment for Covid, we will have to pull out all of our volunteers and support, and these facilities may well have to close completely." Lastly, let me say this: I do not believe that this is a "red-wall" or "blue-wall" issue. It is not, and should not be, a matter of party politics at all. It is a matter of judgment and, in my view, common humanity. For millions of men, women and, in particular, children around the world, aid is their lifeblood. I do not pretend that UK aid can do it all, but it can make a substantial contribution, as we have seen over the past few years In short, I believe that we should keep to the course that we set in 2015. Above all, we should at least have the opportunity to reject these damaging cuts by the Government, obeying the usual parliamentary rules and allowing a vote in both the Commons and the Lords.