argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill — House of Lords, 2015-02-06
Topic: Government Operations
Nigel Lawson (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I regret and apologise for the fact that I was unable to be here in the House for the Second Reading of this Liberal Democrat Private Member’s Bill. However, my regret is somewhat tempered by the fact that contributions were limited to five minutes. This is a very important subject; it is an extremely complex subject; and there is no way that justice can be done to it in five minutes. So I hope that we shall have a little bit more time today It is a thoroughly bad Bill. It represents the triumph of gesture politics over good government.
International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill — House of Lords, 2015-02-06
Topic: International Affairs
Nigel Lawson (Conservative, Centre-right): I am speaking to the amendment. It is a very modest amendment: it just introduces the word "a". The purpose of the amendment is to give the Secretary of State slightly greater flexibility which can be used in the light of changing circumstances as they evolve in the future. That is clearly desirable It is one of a number of amendments and I must explain to the noble Countess why it is necessary to look more broadly. A large number of amendments are down on the Marshalled List, which noble Lords will have recognised. None of them is a wrecking amendment. They are all designed to make the Bill somewhat less bad. I hope that that is a proper exercise for this Committee to be engaged in Noble Lords will have noticed that pretty much all the signatories to the amendments on the Marshalled List were members of the Economic Affairs Committee of this House under the excellent chairmanship of my noble friend Lord MacGregor when we produced our report in 2012 on the economic effectiveness of development aid. We produced a unanimous, all-party report based entirely on the evidence, which was overwhelming. I reassure the noble Countess that I am not going to make this speech on each of the amendments, but this is the first one and it is necessary to explain why we have put down all these different amendments to try to make the Bill slightly less bad The Economic Affairs Committee report had a number of findings. First, it found that the 0.7% target should not be a plank, let alone the main plank, of British aid policy. Secondly, it found that the, "Government should therefore drop its commitment", to establish in law the requirement to spend 0.7% of GNI on aid. Thirdly, it found that, "the evidence that aid makes a contribution to growth in recipient countries is inconclusive" But aid certainly makes a great contribution to corruption in recipient countries. This is a major problem which comes up time and again and was most recently identified in the report of the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee earlier this week Since this is a Liberal Democrat Bill, if the Committee will allow me, I will quote from a letter written to me by—
International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill — House of Lords, 2015-02-06
Topic: Macroeconomics
Nigel Lawson (Conservative, Centre-right): We will see about the support. I am sure my noble friend is right that there different views in different parts of the Committee, but it is significant—and I repeat this since perhaps she did not hear—that the Economic Affairs Committee of this House, which took extensive evidence on this, produced a unanimous all-party report with the conclusions that I summarised a moment ago.
International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill — House of Lords, 2015-02-06
Topic: International Affairs
Nigel Lawson (Conservative, Centre-right): My noble friend is absolutely right. It is the second "the" that I seek to change. I am most grateful to him and I will be grateful for any further interventions that he may wish to make I will for his benefit read out a letter from the former Liberal Democrat mayor of Guildford. He is interesting in this context because he was for many years a senior official in the ODA, which was the predecessor of DfID, and he has maintained a continued interest since his ODA days in the aid programme in its reality. He writes: "I would be prepared to brief anyone who needs to be convinced that there is a now a massive misuse of our aid programme—most recently in Ghana, Mozambique, Nepal, Malawi, Uganda, Rwanda—not to mention Nigeria, Kenya or Pakistan—to which must be added the transfers to the IBRD and other organisations in excess of our obligations to them" The corruption issue—
International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill — House of Lords, 2015-02-06
Topic: International Affairs
Nigel Lawson (Conservative, Centre-right): I am making a speech which puts the context, which is essential for all the amendments on the Marshalled List. I am sorry that noble Lords are terrified of the argument. They realise that this is an absurd Bill. They are not prepared to listen to any arguments against it. Noble Lords will want to read the report of the Economic Affairs Committee. We have ample evidence of all the corruption there is Let me make two things absolutely clear. First, we are not discussing humanitarian aid. My view is that it would be good for us to do more than we do at present in humanitarian aid, but 90% of the British aid programme is so-called development aid, and that is what we are debating today in this Bill. Secondly, I am not at all opposed to the great cause of alleviating poverty in the poorest countries of the world. Indeed, I have always been strongly supportive of that and was lucky enough to be in a position to do something about aid. Some noble Lords will remember the so-called Toronto terms of 1988, which were called the Toronto terms because they were finally agreed at the G7 summit in Toronto. Their aim was to give debt relief to the poorest of the poor countries.
International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill — House of Lords, 2015-02-06
Topic: International Affairs
Nigel Lawson (Conservative, Centre-right): That is a question for the promoters of this Bill, not for me. However, it is certainly a good question. I am not in favour of any kind of ring-fencing, whether it is aid, defence or anything else In defence of my own record, let me refer to the definitive IMF study published in 1999 entitled, From Toronto Terms to the HIPC Initiative: A Brief History of Debt Relief for Low-Income Countries. There it states—
International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill — House of Lords, 2015-02-06
Topic: Macroeconomics
Nigel Lawson (Conservative, Centre-right): I am talking about debt relief for low-income countries. This is just prolonging the debate. I do not wish to prolong it but it is being prolonged as a result of the interventions. The IMF study states: "1987 marked a watershed in the financing of LICs. In April, Nigel Lawson, then UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, launched the first of what proved to be a series of UK LIC debt Initiatives by arguing that Paris Club rescheduling for the LICs should be at below market rates of interest. Thus, for the first time it was proposed that reschedulings of commercially priced ECA debt should involve a reduction in the present value of the debt outstanding".
International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill — House of Lords, 2015-02-06
Topic: International Affairs
David Arthur Russell Howell (Conservative, Centre-right): My noble friend Lord Lawson made an interesting speech. It did not command the total agreement of your Lordships in every aspect but it focused on some important points. It is a small, very neat, amendment but it raises implications. I beg those who are bringing forward and supporting the Bill, with the noblest intentions, to heed some of the points that are made because it will result in a better Bill I also apologise for not being able to join in at Second Reading—I had other commitments—and for the fact that, although I spoke frequently on Foreign Office and Commonwealth Affairs aspects of development aid from both sides of the Dispatch Box over a period of 10 years, I have not spoken on these issues from the Back Benches. However, I have been deeply concerned with development issues over a period of 50 years, going back to the era of the Colonial Development Corporation, the original CDC, before its efforts were later wrecked, I am sorry to say; and with the founding of the first Overseas Development Institute, before we even had a department of development. I regard development as the highest priority for this country and anything which gets in its way concerns me. We ought to try to clear out the obstacles. I am proud that we have become what Sir John Major called the development hub. It is a marvellous role for this country and we should pursue it in the smartest, cleverest and most effective way we can It worries me that without this amendment, by making it "the" duty—the first priority, in effect—of the Secretary of State to adhere to this 0.7% target, we are distorting and damaging the development cause, which has moved into a completely new phase. I read with great care the Second Reading debate—
International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill — House of Lords, 2015-02-06
Topic: International Affairs
David Arthur Russell Howell (Conservative, Centre-right): I am sorry if the noble Baroness is worried about this because she has some extremely valid and important commitments to development and aid. If it was the first "the", it would be "a duty" or "the duty"; if it is the second "the", it is "a target" or "the target". We could slice this very thinly. Behind this lies the consideration that I beg the Committee to examine: that is whether, given today’s context where all the important thinking about development is that overseas official aid assistance is a less important instrument for aid, it should be "the target" or "the duty". I believe that it is wrong to urge the Secretary of State through legislation to stick to the "the’s" rather than the "a’s" I say that not just because the excellent committee report by my colleagues—I did not serve on that committee—gave a whole series of very substantial reasons why one should be cautious about making it "the" target, but because of some important further reasons which are developing all the time and can be analysed by looking at the extremely learned and focused thinking going on today about how to promote development and how our United Kingdom can make its maximum effort towards promoting development in the developing world. I want to give two reasons which I hope the Committee will accept are relevant to changing from an absolute priority target; that is, from "the" to "a". I hope that noble Lords will tolerate me giving the reasons, and indeed I will be rather sad if people are not prepared even to examine these issues The first is this. Most economists who have studied the issue and most of the reports that are coming out today recognise that ODA is only one component of the development effort and that ODA’s relevance to development, in today’s conditions, is declining. Other instruments that require resources are very much more important in promoting development. I mention just overseas security finance, other expenditures which may not be ODA-able such as debt relief, disease research and obviously trade promotion, a range of innovative financing and impact developments. There is also an enormous new range of impact investment that requires resources, while obviously anything that can assist with lower cost green energy is helpful. Indeed, the fall in the oil price is a huge help to developing countries in a way that ODA could not possibly compete with. These are all far more effective—
International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill — House of Lords, 2015-02-06
Topic: International Affairs
David Arthur Russell Howell (Conservative, Centre-right): I hesitate to disagree with the noble Countess, but the Committee stage is where we should look at the details that will make a Bill better. I do not see why the noble Countess finds that so objectionable and keeps interrupting speeches. I am not sure that that is the right way in which we should proceed if we want a better Bill There is a school of thought called Beyond Aid, which has been looked at very closely in an excellent report in the other place on the future of UK development aid. It brings home the point that if we focus on development in this context, we have to look at other areas of ODA, which is the traditional area of budget assistance. I notice that the Japanese are planning to include aid to armed forces in their definition of ODA; I am not sure whether that is something we want to encourage at all. That is the first reason why I think that this is a good amendment and I hope that we can develop it The second reason derives from practical experience. For two or three years recently I was involved at the Foreign Office in dealing with what was and was not ODA, and therefore where the priorities should lie. There is no doubt in my mind that if we have a fixed percentage, it will create huge problems for aid management between the partners. My noble friend referred to the points made by the National Audit Office on that. I beg noble Lords to understand that it is not just a question of accounting methods or a difference arising from data disputes about what is or is not ODA—which are enormous—and it is not just a question of moving the goalposts, which several donor countries are interested in doing. It is a question of whether this target prevents us from prioritising the development tools that really matter. Those tools today are increasingly to be found outside ODA. I am sorry if that is a Second Reading point, but it is also a central point to this debate, and I believe that we should look at it fairly and squarely, without trying to push it aside We need to consider far more the spread of power to developing countries rather than just budgetary aid in cash. There are vast new networks that should be developed in order to promote development, which we are not doing. Your Lordships will not be surprised if I mention the Commonwealth network as one of them. It provides a huge flow of trusted and valued investment in a way that ODA never can. I must apologise if the following sounds like a point for Second Reading, but unfortunately DfID recently made some accidental cuts into the Commonwealth budgets, which have now been restored. I congratulate the Secretary of State for International Development on removing those cuts to the Commonwealth budgets because they have been far more helpful to development than merely dishing out cash I believe that this amendment will help the Bill, which otherwise could fall victim—
International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill — House of Lords, 2015-02-06
Topic: International Affairs
David Arthur Russell Howell (Conservative, Centre-right): I appreciate the contribution that the noble Lord makes, but I have not spoken against the Bill; I am speaking in favour of it. I am saying that here is a Bill full of excellent intentions but which could, if we allow it to go unamended by this kind of amendment and the amendments that we will go on to debate today, fall to the danger of being bound by the thinking of yesterday. I beg noble Lords to understand that modern thinking about development takes us away from making it the prime duty—if it is the first "the", or the prime target, if it is the second "the"—to increase overseas development assistance or pin it to 0.7% of GNI.
International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill — House of Lords, 2015-02-06
Topic: International Affairs
David Arthur Russell Howell (Conservative, Centre-right): I am sorry; I am not quite sure what point the noble Lord is making. I am trying to deliver the last sentence of my contribution and I do not understand why the noble Lord feels that it is right to keep interrupting I am sure that your Lordships’ House is the place that can refine and improve a Bill and will not try to knock down or contain attempts to improve it, as I believe this amendment does. We have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Butler, and we have heard many wise voices from our Back Benches. We have heard from major committees in other countries, from the Dutch and German ministries and from House of Commons committees that there is a danger of too much emphasis being put on overseas development assistance as "the" target and "the" duty, which could badly distort our development priorities. Today, we need new priorities, and the Bill should reflect them and not reject them. That is why I am grateful to those noble Lords who are prepared to hear some doubts about an otherwise noble and well intentioned Bill.
International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill — House of Lords, 2015-02-06
Topic: International Affairs
John Dawson Eccles (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, perhaps I could make a very brief intervention. My noble friend referred to the Colonial Development Corporation. In my time it was the Commonwealth Development Corporation—now called CDC. It may come as some surprise to your Lordships that it is still 100% owned by the taxpayer, but that is now a well kept secret. When I was fortunate enough to be its chief executive, we were much interested in income as well as in expenditure. One of the difficulties and the need for flexibility in this target is that if you are interested in income as well as expenditure, you cannot very well set the figure before the beginning of the year with any great accuracy. You need some flexibility That leads me on to a thought that is also a very strong reason for there being flexibility, as the noble Lord, Lord Butler, said. Life moves on. Things change very rapidly. Without the flexibility to adjust to those changes, you can be in great trouble. It has always seemed strange to me that, ever since the great days of Lord Bauer and Lord Balogh debating aid seriously in this House, in the 15 years that I have been in this House I have not yet heard a really serious debate about third world, second world or whatever world development—not one. In those days, there were serious debates on the subject and they got down into the depths of it, as indeed my noble friend Lord Howell was trying to indicate—much, I think, to the disappointment of the House I end by saying that I hope your Lordships will not regard the whole business of overseas development as a shut subject: "There is nothing more to say about it, we all know the answers and so we set this fixed, rigid target". Finally, I think the structure when ODA came under a Minister of State within the Foreign Office was a much better structure than the one we have today.
International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill — House of Lords, 2015-02-06
Topic: International Affairs
John MacGregor (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I was not able to attend Second Reading because of long-term commitments in Norfolk. The noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, who has his name on some of the amendments today, is unable to attend because of other commitments, and asked me to give his apologies I would like to say at the outset that there are two themes in the amendments that we have put forward. One is the issue that the noble Lord, Lord Butler, raised, which I entirely agree with, and this amendment is relevant to that. The other is to do with making sure that aid is effective and that it deals with corruption and things of that sort. Those are the two themes. If we are to have this argument about this amendment, we shall go on all day. I want to make my point on this amendment in relation to the first theme and I do not want to repeat it afterwards, so that we can go swiftly through the remainder of the amendments. But if we are not even able to do that on this amendment, I have to say that I do not think that this House is performing its function of scrutinising legislation in detail. I say to those who fear a filibuster—and there is not; we have a number of objections for a number of purposes—that I intend to make most of my arguments on this amendment so that I do not have to repeat them. But if I am not allowed to do so, I have to ask: who is preventing this Bill going forward We all know that there is a tight timetable. It should have been a government Bill but it is a Private Member’s Bill, which adds to the difficulties, and we all know we are coming right up to the end of the Parliament. I want to try to make the Bill more effective, as I believe this House should do, and I hope I will be allowed to develop my argument on this amendment; otherwise, I shall have to repeat it on all the other amendments. Let me make my position on that clear I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, on his very impressive speech at Second Reading—of course, I have read the whole debate—and his recognition of some of the concerns we have. I am in total agreement with him about the importance of development aid and I am proud of the contribution this Government make and the lead they give internationally. But I have some concerns about the Bill. The first set is all about the points that the noble Lord, Lord Butler, made. I hope I do not have to repeat them on the later amendments.
International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill — House of Lords, 2015-02-06
Topic: International Affairs
Michael Bruce Forsyth (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, with some trepidation I rise to speak to this amendment. Perhaps I should make it absolutely clear that I am not against the Government spending 0.7%, 0.8% or 1% of gross national income on aid. I am not opposed to aid; indeed, I have raised quite a lot of money for women in India. For me, the central argument is what we are trying to do here. I hope that I can avoid the noble Countess calling me to order in speaking to this amendment By the way, I do not know why there is confusion about which "the" it is. The amendment says: "Page 1, line 2, leave out first ‘the’ and insert ‘a’" We are talking about "a" duty of the Secretary of State rather than "the" duty.
International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill — House of Lords, 2015-02-06
Topic: International Affairs
Michael Bruce Forsyth (Conservative, Centre-right): In which case my noble friend got it right and that is what we will discuss. If we are to talk about the target, that is what I want to address. My understanding of the Bill and its genesis—the idea was included in our manifesto as something that we would do in the first Session of this Parliament; the timetable has slipped a little—was that we wanted to enshrine in statute the UN target of 0.7%. That is what I thought we were trying to do. The UN resolution made in 1970 in respect of the target that we are apparently signing up to said: "In recognition of the special importance of the role which can be fulfilled only by official development assistance, a major part of financial resource transfers to the developing countries should be provided in the form of official development assistance. Each economically advanced country will progressively increase its official development assistance to the developing countries and will exert its best efforts to reach a minimum net amount of 0.7 per cent of its gross national product at market prices by the middle of the Decade" That would have been in 1975, so we are some 40 years behind that deadline. I point out that the target was 0.7% of "gross national product", but the Bill before us sets a target for a percentage of gross national income. That is not the same thing.