Commonwealth Development Corporation Bill — House of Commons, 2017-01-10
Topic: International Affairs
Patrick John Grady (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I will speak to amendment 3 and new clause 6, which are in my name, and I will offer support for the Labour party’s amendments that I have added my name to Nobody here is arguing that the CDC should not exist. We all recognise there is a role for development finance and private investment. As I noted on Second Reading, the Scottish Government have just set up their own investment mechanism in Malawi. But even if we wanted to change some of the deeper fundamentals, that is not in the scope of the Bill. The Government, probably deliberately, have presented a very narrow Bill with the aim of increasing the statutory limit of their investment. Therefore, by definition, that is what our amendments must focus on I hope that the Government will see—certainly in the amendments I have tabled and, I think, in the Labour ones—that we have tried to respond to and take on board some of their concerns about some of our amendments in Committee. It is up to the Government to respond and indicate how they will take our concerns on board. We all want to work constructively with the Government on the Bill. We want to recognise and maintain the consensus on the importance of aid, our commitment to 0.7% and the effective use of those resources Amendment 3, which is in my name, and amendments 2 and 4, which are contingent on it, gets to the heart of the technical aspect of the Bill: what the cap on investment in the CDC should be. The Government have been repeatedly asked for their reasons behind the figures of £6 billion and £12 billion in the Bill, and I am afraid that they have still come up short. The best we have heard is that this is roughly what they think is needed, or could be managed, over the coming years. In the lifetime of this Parliament, that could still equate to an additional £1.5 billion to £2 billion a year of investment from the official development assistance budget to the CDC. As we have repeatedly said, every penny invested in the CDC is a penny not invested in other mainstream, grassroots and not-for-profit development projects and support On Second Reading, I asked about the use of a formula to link the cap with overall ODA budgets, and I proposed such a formula in Committee. The Minister’s first concern about a formula was that it would blur the line between stock and flow. But the aid budget is a flow. It goes up and it can, theoretically, go down as well. I recognise that the CDC investment is a stock: once funds are transferred, that is where they stay and they remain part of the overall capital fund. However, the formula would ask the Government, each time they want to disburse funds to CDC, to calculate how those funds will relate to overall aid spending in the coming years The Minister’s second concern was that my formula in Committee effectively discounted the £1.5 billion already invested in the CDC. Amendment 3 and the contingent amendments take that into account. By my calculations, based on figures from the Library, this formula would still allow the Government to invest an extra £3 billion, or a total of £4.5 billion, in the CDC by 2021. Even if the Government will not accept the amendment and we cannot persuade enough of their Back Benchers to join us in the Lobby to support it, I hope that they will commit to recognising that the £6 billion figure currently stated in the legislation is a maximum and that any additional investment they intend to make will ultimately reflect the ebb and flow of overall ODA calculations in any given spending round Irrespective of the caps and limits, much concern has been expressed throughout the passage of the Bill over how some aspects of the CDC’s resources have been spent in the past and how they will continue to be spent in the future. That is what I seek to address with new clause 6, which is particularly important in the context of increasing—potentially quadrupling—the overall resources available to the CDC. I welcome the range of amendments in Committee and here today that attempt to place various conditions on the exercise of the power to increase the limit As I said at the start, owing to the scope of the Bill, my amendments and those of Labour Members must relate to the increase in the limit from £6 billion to £12 billion under the terms of section 15(4) of the Commonwealth Development Corporation Act 1999. Try as we might, it has not been possible to find a way to attach conditions to the investment of up to £6 billion. The Government have indicated that the timetable for using the statutory instrument powers would be some way in the distance, so it is not unreasonable to suggest that there should be some kind of conditionality and review process before those powers are used, especially given that we will apparently have so much time to prepare New clause 6 combines two conditions I called for in Committee: before the Government could increase the limit of their investment, the Secretary of State would be required to make an assessment of how an increased limit would contribute to a reduction in poverty, which is the statutory aim of ODA in the International Development Act 2002, and how that increase would help to meet the sustainable development goals. The Government have repeatedly argued that the CDC is doing both those things very effectively, in which case this is hardly an onerous request, but the new clause would have the effect of making it much clearer that this is the CDC’s overall purpose and that commercial gain, returns on investment and even raw figures on the number of jobs created are not an end in themselves, but only the means to the end of reducing poverty and building a more stable and secure world. Again, the responsibility is on the Government, if they will not accept our amendments, at least to acknowledge the concerns being expressed and to give commitments to show in any business case they publish for further investment how the key pillars of poverty reduction and the global sustainable development goals will be advanced I briefly speak in favour of, and indicate the Scottish National party’s support for, the range of thoughtful amendments tabled by the Labour shadow team and by the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty), who serves on the Select Committee on International Development. I welcome the fact that there has been cross-party support for the amendments and suggest that the Government pay attention to that. There remains consensus in this House and across the country in support of the principle of aid, the 0.7% target and, of course, the effective use of that aid. Many of Labour’s amendments, as the hon. Member for Edmonton (Kate Osamor) said, simply ask DFID to hold the CDC to the same standards that the Government now demand of their external stakeholders. Their recent bilateral and multilateral development reviews were pretty much unilateral declarations of everything that was terrible and wasteful on the part of so many of their stakeholders and demanded that the highest standards of efficiency, impact and transparency be applied to them. It stands to reason that those standards should also be demanded of the CDC A Government who say they want to crack down on tax dodging should not be allowing an agency of which they are the sole stakeholder to be making use of offshore tax havens. A Government who want value for money and clear impact from their aid budget should not be afraid to ask for reporting on exactly those areas. My colleagues and I will be happy to join the Labour party, hon. Members from other Opposition parties, and any Conservative Member persuaded of the case in the Lobby in support of any amendments they wish to press. I said on Second Reading that it was disappointing that the scope of the Bill was so narrow. The Government had the opportunity to widen the scope to strengthen the CDC’s effectiveness, transparency and accountability. They also had that opportunity with the substantial and, in some cases, creative amendments that have been proposed by Opposition Members from different parties. If Ministers continue to indicate an unwillingness to accept amendments—it is disappointing that they did not table any of their own to reflect the concerns raised by Members—they must give the strongest possible commitments now in response to the concerns we have raised. The Government must recognise, as the Labour Front Bench spokesperson said, that this is the beginning, and not the end, of a process.