Official Development Assistance and the British Council — House of Commons, 2021-06-30
Topic: International Affairs
David Michael Davis (Conservative, Centre-right): It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne). He is, as he so often is, absolutely on the nail with his speech. It is all well and good our sitting or standing here, talking about the percentage cuts here and the percentage cuts there, but we are all clear on this: these cuts will kill. In Whitehall, the savings that the Government say they will make are rounding errors in their accounts, but in Syria, Yemen, Somalia and the Sahel, these "small savings" are a matter of life and death. It is that simple In the horn of Africa, the epicentre of instability may be Ethiopia at the moment, but it threatens to ripple through Eritrea and Somalia into Kenya and Tanzania because the virus and locust plagues have ravaged livestock and livelihoods there—fertile ground for the terrorist organisation al-Shabaab to thrive and recruit and to revive its murderous endeavours. To the west, across the Sahel, droughts in the summer and floods in the winter have already caused conflict over resources, and in northern Nigeria, Boko Haram’s reign of terror persists The fact that these events are not on the evening news does not make them any less of a threat to us. The tragedies at home—covid-19 deaths, job losses, loneliness, mental health problems—may be our primary concern, but the fact that something is not happening here does not mean that it is not happening, or that it does not matter here In the Sahel, 270,000 people a year get life-saving medical support. That is going to be cancelled this year. In Syria, funding for the International Rescue Committee is being cut by 75%. That means that 100,000 Syrians will be without life-saving services, including health clinics to support women and children traumatised by war. In Nigeria, the International Rescue Committee will see the budget for its programmes fall from £15 million two years ago to just £2.8 million this year, which will leave women, children and disabled people who have fled the conflict with Boko Haram without life-saving support. The UN has told us that in Ethiopia, 350,000 face imminent starvation Let us put this in context. The four-year Bosnian war—a brutal, devastating war that saw Europe’s first genocide since world war two—left 100,000 people dead. These cuts will result in a death toll equal to or higher than that war’s. In the words of the Secretary-General of the UN, they are "a death sentence". He is right. We have arbitrarily and unilaterally turned our back on victims of war in the middle of a global pandemic. It goes against every value that we promote as global Britain, and it is happening against the will of the British people and the British Parliament The Government may think that they are appealing to some populist vote on this issue, but even there they are wrong. Polling since the decision now shows that 53% of the public support foreign aid. Let us be clear: a majority of the public support the arguments that we are making today in this Chamber. The public in this country are caring, compassionate and principled, and our foreign aid policy must reflect that. It is perfectly reasonable to ask questions about how aid money is spent, whether or not we should have a fixed target and how big or small it should be, but there is a time and a place to ask those questions. Now is not the time, and this is not the way Listening to the debate, I thought that there was a risk for all of us. I think it is asserted that Stalin once said that a single death is a tragedy and a million deaths is a statistic. We have been standing here talking about 100,000 deaths here and 100,000 deaths there, so I will finish by drawing attention to the nature of what we are talking about. We are talking about miserable deaths for babies and children from starvation, diarrhoea and dysentery. We are talking about women dying in childbirth or shortly after. We are talking about the sort of cruelty—although it may be cruelty by neglect—that, if put in front of any ordinary constituent of ours, would draw both their compassion and their generosity. That is what we want from the Government, either today or when they come to make their proper decision on this policy.