Commonwealth Development Corporation Bill — House of Commons, 2016-11-29
Topic: International Affairs
Fiona Claire Bruce (Conservative, Centre-right): On behalf of other members of the Select Committee, I inform the House that many of them are abroad on a visit to the middle east but would have spoken in the debate had they been here. It would be wrong for me to indicate how they would have spoken or whether, like me, they support the Bill, but I will put on the record one or two comments previously made by members of the Committee. As long ago as 2011, my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) said in a debate on the CDC: "It is extremely important that the Government should continue to support CDC."—[Official Report, 14 July 2011; Vol. 531, c. 169WH.] An IDC report on jobs and livelihood in the last Parliament stated: "We are encouraged that CDC has followed our recommendations and has refocused on job creation." A final Select Committee example is a recent report on the sustainable development goals, which stated: "The Government must ensure that the work it carries out to encourage private sector investment, through CDC…is focused on developing and fragile states". It went on to mention "a positive impact on the achievement of the SDGs", which the CDC had the potential to achieve. It was interesting to note that in response the Government stated: "CDC’s mandate is aligned with achievement of the Goals" Before I touch on a few of my prepared remarks, I would like to deal with some of comments made by another member of our Select Committee, the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty). He mentioned his concerns about the effectiveness, the poverty focus and the coherence of the CDC’s work, and I would like to respond to these The hon. Gentleman said that there should be more emphasis on health and education. However, the CDC’s development impact is amplified by the billions of pounds in local taxes that are generated by the companies it invests in. These help to support the public services such as health and education in developing countries. Over the past three years alone, these companies have generated over £7 billion-worth of local tax revenue. It is important to remember the impact that these taxes can have on those kinds of essential services The hon. Gentleman spoke about coherence, and he and others have mentioned transparency, but DFID works very closely with the CDC to ensure that it is at the forefront of global standards of transparency in development impact. Information about all the CDC’s investments is available on a comprehensive database on its website, with details of the name and location of every investment in the portfolio. I am sure that further information would be made available if members of the Select Committee requested it. If DFID is working, as we know it is, with the CDC on a new results framework, this will result in an even better capture of the broader impact of investments on development—even beyond job creation and tax revenue generated Finally, the hon. Gentleman raised his concerns about investment by the CDC in a private, fee-paying hospital in India, stating that this might be at odds with DFID’s general approach towards the expenditure of UK aid. However, I clearly remember the Select Committee visiting a private, fee-paying school in Africa not so long ago, and Committee members agreed that DFID’s support for that school was, in fact, well spent, particularly when there was no other option for children in that area to obtain an education. I believe these issues need to be looked at in context, and I am not so sure that support for this hospital is so out of line with DFID’s general approach.