That this House takes note of the plans by Her Majesty’s Government to announce a new international development strategy for the United Kingdom in 2022.
My Lords, I am grateful for this opportunity. I draw attention to my entry in the Lords register.
This week, across the United Kingdom, families of all faiths have been worrying about how they will manage to spend the holiday season, beginning next week, with their families and, perhaps, their friends. However, my thoughts have been drawn constantly this week to those millions of people around the world for whom daily life is so unbearable and the future so threatening that, whatever small luxuries they might enjoy this holiday season, they are looking forward to 2022 with dread. Wherever they come from, those who are hungry and worried, who have been displaced and who are experiencing extreme weather events or conflict and violence, will look at the Christmas period as a time when those relentless pressures continue and are not abated.
This year, that is perhaps more true in Afghanistan than anywhere else, given the events of recent months. Not only is there drought, a vaccination rate below 10% and 2 million people in the country currently hungry as a result of this year’s events, it is reckoned that perhaps as many as 1 million children under five could die in 2022 if emergency assistance is not available. Yesterday, the Disasters Emergency Committee launched an appeal for Afghanistan. I urge Members of your Lordships’ House to support it this Christmas and think about those in much less fortunate circumstances than us.
This is a rare opportunity to debate a strategy that has not yet been published. I therefore very much welcome this opportunity and am grateful to be able to lead the debate. I thank the Minister for attending and for what I am sure will be an interesting summation of the debate. I also thank him for his work this year in ensuring that COP 26 focused not only on climate change but on moving the emergency of our natural resource depletion up the agenda and putting biodiversity at the centre of the debate in a way that had not been the case at previous climate summits.
I thank noble Lords for speaking in the debate but I am sure that we all miss Frank Judd, who would of course have contributed today had he been with us at the end of this year, as he was last Christmas. I hope that his regular call to think about the interdependence of our world will be at the forefront of our minds in our contributions today. I made my first contribution in your Lordships’ House on 8 July 2010, speaking just after Lord Judd. At that time—it was a debate on international development—I referred to “signs of hope”. In my summation, I said:
“Let us build on them and help to build a safer and more prosperous world for us all.”—[Official Report, 8/7/10; col. 360.]
That seems like a very long time ago.
In the years following that debate, the new Government appeared as enthusiastic as the previous one about international development and making a positive contribution overseas, with the establishment of the Building Stability Overseas Strategy, which evolved over the years into the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund, and the commitment to 50% of ODA going to fragile and conflict-affected states. The commitment given by the previous Government to spend 0.7% of GNI on official development assistance was also enacted during that period.
My Lords, I look forward to the publication of the international development strategy. A lot has changed in the UK since the previous strategy was published in 2015. Some of that change has been caused by factors beyond our direct control, such as the Covid pandemic, crises from Afghanistan to Ethiopia, and the impacts of extreme weather and climate change around the world. However, some of that change has been due to decisions made by this Government: the merger of the FCO and DfID, and the move from our commitment to spend 0.7% of GNI on international development, while we have been assured is temporary. I look forward to that returning.
I do not want to dwell on this but will make one point on vaccines. The events of recent weeks have shown that we must redouble our efforts. As well as causing millions of deaths around the world, Covid is putting at risk the gains that we have made on development in recent decades. Counting our funding for vaccines within the self-imposed ceiling of 0.5% will inevitably hamper our efforts to help the rest of the world—and, therefore, ourselves—to deal with the virus and the variants that we will continue to see emerge from unvaccinated populations. There is little better investment that we can make at the moment. I strongly encourage the Government to think again and to fund global vaccination efforts over and above that 0.5% so that we can do more. The economic case, even if we look solely at the UK, could not be clearer.
There was little on development in the integrated review, so I look forward to the strategy fleshing out the details. In an attempt to be constructive, I acknowledge that the merger may bring some benefits, if the strategy recognises that development genuinely sits at the heart of the new department, as we have been repeatedly reassured. I hope that a new international development strategy, a new framework, will give a new impetus and direction of travel to the department, and involve the traditional diplomatic expertise from what was the FCO alongside the development expertise from what was DfID.
My Lords, I draw attention to two issues that relate to the alleviation of poverty, social justice, human rights, and trade and development. First, the Pandora papers, the Panama papers, the Paradise papers and many others provide abundant evidence of global tax abuses, which deprive countries, especially poorer countries, of vital tax revenues. Those leaks highlight the role of accountants, lawyers and finance experts based in the UK, Crown dependencies and overseas territories, but the Government are yet to investigate, fine or prosecute any of the big accounting firms involved in those abuses. I hope the Minister can tell us whether any prosecutions are in the pipeline and, if not, why not.
The OECD also estimates that African countries lose at least $50 billion in taxes due to corporate tax abuses, which is more than the aid they receive. The Government can help to curb these predatory practices by imposing trade sanctions on tax havens, including Crown dependencies and overseas territories, for facilitating this global looting. They can also embrace transparency by ensuring that country-by-country reporting evidence is made public and by requiring large companies to publish their tax returns. That can again help developing countries.
Secondly, can the Minister please examine the negative impact of stabilisation clauses imposed on poorer countries through foreign direct investment agreements? Many of these are brokered by the Government themselves. The FDI agreements are often between unequals and, in many cases, the corporations are financially and politically more powerful than the host countries. I have seen some agreements that are over 300 pages long and written in dense legal language. Most are not publicly available, as corporations insist on that, making it difficult for anybody in those poorer countries to seek redress for abuses.
Stabilisation clauses are widely used by transnational corporations to manage non-commercial risks by stabilising or freezing the terms and conditions of a project. In effect, the project becomes a state within a state, with its own laws and rules. These clauses generally guarantee for the investors, who are mostly in the western world, that the domestic laws affecting the investment will remain unchanged or frozen during the entire life of the project, which can be 50 to 100 years.
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale, on securing this important debate. In common with other noble Lords, I await the Government’s strategy with interest, although on my part, I am afraid, with little expectation. I will focus my remarks on three particular areas that, among others, need to be central to any development assistance strategy: first, strengthening health services; secondly, combating climate change; and, thirdly, underpinning democracy and the rule of law.
Strengthening health services must be a key focus of our strategy. The Government’s decision to slash the aid budget—and here I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, for her commitment and integrity on this issue—was not only morally wrong but has proved detrimental to the health and well-being of our own citizens. Omicron is teaching us a hard lesson, but it is one that should have been obvious from the start: it is no good pulling up the drawbridges and putting the national interest before the interest of others because, in a global pandemic, the global interest is the national interest. The rich world cannot discharge its duty to protect its own citizens until it also discharges its duty to protect all the world. It is a parable for our times.
On Tuesday, the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, told the House that
“we are only as safe as everyone else is.”—[Official Report, 14/12/21; col. 135.]
So why are the Government making us all less safe by the savage cuts we are inflicting on aid budgets and the huge economic damage we are doing, and have done, to developing economies by the travel bans, now, happily, abandoned? It is no good the Government saying one thing while they do the exact opposite.
As the Government develop their aid strategy, they must learn from this pandemic, because it is unlikely to be the last. They must work with G7 partners and other allies to help strengthen health services in low-income countries. The cuts are catastrophic to that process—over 50% in the case in many countries across Africa.
My Lords, during the Cross-Bench debate in April on the reduction in UK development aid, the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, told us
“I am determined … that we return to 0.7% as quickly as we can”.—[Official Report, 28/4/21; col. GC 558.]
In thanking the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, for initiating today’s debate, I agree with him that the sooner we can restore funding for initiatives such as girls education, cut by 25%, and humanitarian preparedness for famine, the better.
In addition to hard-edged aid, UK funding does other extraordinary things, with, for instance, BBC World Service audiences reaching 364 million people—up 13 million people last year. I hope the Minister can tell us when the World Service, a global force for good, is likely to receive confirmation of its funding figures for 2022 onwards, and whether it will be sufficient to ensure that the World Service can continue to build on the success of World 2020 programmes and further expand its global reach.
In every context, secure and sustained funding is crucial to the credibility we have in sustaining of our relationships, a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, on many occasions. But so is the way we use the money. I will never forget seeing the bombed remains of a clinic, a school and the homes of villagers I visited in South Sudan during the civil war, which claimed 2 million lives. Along with lost lives, millions of pounds of development aid was destroyed by Khartoum’s aerial bombardment of what were its own citizens. Now independent, South Sudan still struggles against all the odds to recover from that unspeakable violence.
Conflict destroys development, so a primary objective of our new development strategy must be to prevent and resolve conflict. Conflict also drives displacement, contributing to the 82.4 million people displaced worldwide, 42% of whom are children and 32% of whom are refugees—an issue the House will debate on a Cross-Bench Motion on 6 January. How are we using the £400 million earmarked by the FCDO to promote conflict management and resolution? What progress has been made in developing recently created FCDO initiatives for conflict mediation and stability, and in co-ordinating all conflict work right across government?
My Lords, I shall begin with two points that I do not think anyone will disagree with. First, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, on obtaining this debate and, secondly, I reaffirm my support, which I think is widely reflected in the House, for 0.7% of GNI to be used as overseas aid. That is probably where I end the consensus.
I know this debate is about the Government announcing a new international development strategy. I hope that the word “new” will be kept to the fore, because I have thought for quite a long time that there are many things in our development strategy that could be bettered. One of them is that, as the brief says, we need a globally focused UK to maintain its commitment to Africa while increasing development efforts in the Indo-Pacific—but I think we have to look at what we spend the money on.
I have made many visits to aid projects. Some aid projects funded and excellently run by British NGOs are doing little more than running perpetual food banks. We should have the Trussell Trust out there. I recall one project I visited in India which was teaching women how to cook. I thought it was a very good thing that a number of mainly English people—I think there was one Scottish person—were teaching Indian women how to cook rice. Of course, they were doing something more serious and were looking at nutrition, babies and the like, but they were only scratching surfaces. They were not really dealing with problems. I often reflect on the statement that we had years ago on aid agency posters: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for life.” We need to do far more to help people to develop.
If we are to integrate aid and have an international development strategy, it would not be a bad idea to have a closer look at arms sales. Look at the amount of destruction in the world—which aid is often there to try to get around—that is being caused by arms, often from British factories and very often from western factories. We go in, we bomb the place to bits and then we have an aid programme to build it up, presumably to get into shape for the next bombing. Forty years ago, I was involved with Ethiopia. We really thought that we were curing the problems of Ethiopia and that Band Aid, Geldof and all the initiatives that were run, principally in the 1980s and early 1990s, were going to rebuild a new Ethiopia, but it is back to where it was, and that must surely in part be caused by a failure of our aid projects.
My Lords, I too pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, for obtaining this really important debate and for his passionate and informed introduction, which set the scene so well for us.
The omicron variant is a powerful and topical reminder that there is only one world and only one human race. There are people around who want to make out the case that our concern for international development is an additional cost, something added on the side. Actually, when we truly grasp what it is about, it is a real win-win for us. Apart from it being morally right, it will make economic sense for us as well as helping us address many issues. For example, helping other countries to flourish and thrive will increase their health systems, address things such as the pandemic we currently face and even begin to address some of the issues of economic migrants, so it is vital for us.
The noble Lord, Lord McConnell, rightly pointed out that the endgame is to try to end poverty and move beyond it. That is right, but how are we going to do it? First, the immediate pressing issue is addressing the pandemic. Some might say that we are talking about a long-term strategy. Students of pandemics tell us that it typically takes five, six or seven years as a disease works its way through populations, and we are not even in year three yet—we have not even completed two years. This is going to be going on for some while, so it is vital that we address this issue. That touches on a number of the issues that people have already raised, such as doing what we can to help provide vaccines, trying to licence vaccine production in other countries and indeed, as we were talking about earlier this week, overcoming vaccine hesitancy. I will not say any more about that but we in the Anglican Communion are seeking to work with our overseas links, providing teaching materials in local languages, led by local community leaders, to try to overcome vaccine hesitancy.
My Lords, I draw the attention of the House to my interests. I too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, on having secured this debate today and introducing it with his usual expertise.
Last Friday was Human Rights Day, a day to celebrate the anniversary of the 1948 adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and to celebrate our shared humanity. It reminds us why international development is so important—helping to address extreme poverty, encouraging human rights and promoting democratic and peaceful societies—and how vital the sustainable development goals are, with their ethos of leaving no one behind.
At a time when the world is under such strain through Covid and climate change, it is deeply regrettable that the UK decided to reduce its contribution from 0.7% of GDP to 0.5%, and I look forward to aid being restored to 0.7% as soon as possible. However, we should not forget what those aid cuts have meant to those on the ground. The International Rescue Committee tells me that between 2017 and 2021 the FCDO decreased funding for one of its flagship Syria projects by 75%. This resulted in cutting support for the operation of 20 health facilities, impacting some 76,000 individuals. Their livelihood centres had to close, and cuts to programmes there affected over 36,000 people across northern Syria, over half of them women and most of them living below the poverty line. Some 10 million people may lose access to WASH programmes in this year alone.
I welcome the Government’s announcement of a new international development strategy for next year and the Foreign Secretary’s announcement of her commitment to putting women and girls at the heart of UK foreign policy, including reversing aid cuts to programmes targeting women and girls. As she rightly said, the UK’s
“core agenda of promoting freedom and democracy cannot happen without freedom for women.”
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The emerging consensus, which was perhaps stronger than it had ever been in our country, was that the UK’s role as a development superpower was a key part of our soft power around the world and not just a moral obligation—it is a moral obligation, of course; I will always insist that that is the primary purpose of the contribution that we make—but it was also in our own self-interest in building a better and safer world for all. Even in 2019, after all the division of the previous two or three years and that very divisive election campaign, there was still some consensus between the parties and their manifestos. The party that won that election, of course, had firm manifesto commitments to increase spending on girls’ education, end malaria and maintain the commitment to 0.7% of our GNI being spent on official development assistance.
How different 2021 has been. In a year when our call to action should have been much stronger than ever before, with so many around the world suffering from vaccine inequality and the economic, educational and health challenges of lockdowns, we were the only leading nation in the world to cut our official development assistance. In a year when millions of youngsters missed out on school and millions of girls will not return to school, we cut the funding that we were going to give to girls’ education. In a year when we led the climate summit in Glasgow and had a responsibility to show an example to the rest of the world, we fell short on transitional funding for the countries that will suffer most from climate change and will now potentially suffer most in the transition to a greener future. This year, we have seen the migration and displacement of people go to their highest levels ever. We have seen the number of people around the world in extreme poverty go up, rather than down, for the first time in a generation. We continue to see vaccine inequality causing difficulties and problems in every part of the world.
Since 2010 and that speech I made in my first month in your Lordships’ House, I have tried very hard to work on a cross-party basis on international development and conflict issues, and to build friendships and collaborations across this House and another place to ensure that we take this agenda forward. I have tried to be optimistic at all times—even at the end of 2021, when I believe that the Government have made so many mistakes in this area of policy. I will try to be optimistic again today because the integrated review gave a commitment to a new international development strategy. It said that we would continue as a country to be a world leader on development. It said that we would restate our commitment to poverty eradication. It said that we would align our development spending and work with the Paris Agreement. It said that we would continue to work to achieve the SDGs by 2030. I welcome those commitments; I want to see them at the heart of this new strategy.
Today, I do not want to talk about how much is in the budget or how we spend the money; that is, the mechanics of delivery. I want to concentrate and what and why. This review should be an opportunity to review some of the inexplicable decisions that were made in 2021, such as the decision to almost completely clear out all UK funding for mine clearance around the world, which was just shameful. It should also be an opportunity to reinforce bilateral programmes again and give our ambassadors the sort of clout they could have had with an FCDO that was on the front foot rather than the back foot.
As the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, recently suggested in your Lordships’ House, it should set out a plan to work towards 0.7% being back in place, not just as a hope, an aspiration or a surprise in some budget in two or three years’ time, but as a step-by-step rebuild of the capacity and the spending. Also, much more importantly, it should set out priorities and a strategy. The objective and purpose of that strategy should be our contribution to the international effort to eradicate extreme poverty. That is the primary purpose of our official development assistance. The primary purpose of international development work should be to leave no one behind.
There is, of course, a role for the UK and others to contribute to immediate emergency humanitarian needs and, of course, we build into these strategies environmental considerations, the need for economic growth to sustain development, and the need for better governance and security, but poverty reduction is the moral purpose of development and the best way to ensure that our interests are met in the long-term, as well as the interests of those who suffer extreme poverty.
I suggest three key priorities for this strategy, which we hope will be published in the new year. First, it should be crystal clear throughout that we align our development spending and our work with the Paris Agreement and now, of course, with the agreements that were reached in Glasgow, and that we support the continuing UK COP 26 presidency by ensuring that we are working in a joined-up way between our development work and our work towards a greener and more environmentally friendly world. We should not be substituting development spending for the spending on the other initiatives that the Government should be pursuing in the UK’s role as president of COP 26. We should focus our development spending on supporting just transitions and mitigating the impacts, and on disaster resilience in the meantime for those countries that suffer the most from extreme weather events and climate change.
The second priority that should run right through the strategy is a focus on girls and women. The new Foreign Secretary has already mentioned economic development as a key priority, and of course we want to see economic growth in the developing world that sustains development over the longer term. Women’s economic empowerment, bringing women to the centre, will be by far the best investment for the long term to secure sustainable economic development. Alongside that, equal access to health, human rights, and the freedom to enjoy a childhood without being married early or having your body abused are fundamental, as is the need for girls’ education, not just in primary school but right through secondary school and into further and higher education. Education is the great liberator. I think that the Prime Minister understands this and believes it. I implore him to turn it into action and funding, and to deliver more than just the words of the commitment.
The third area, which the Government have had a reasonably good record on over the last decade, is the commitment to conflict-affected and fragile states; I sincerely hope that that will be at the heart of the new strategy. Support for peacebuilding and conflict prevention has been the hallmark of UK development work for two decades. In that debate in 2010, I said that
“development is the mortar of peace.”—[Official Report, 8/7/10; col. 360.]
Development and peace are completely interlinked. Nelson Mandela said that you cannot get peace without development and you cannot get development without peace. We see today in Ethiopia how quickly incredible levels of development can fall apart when conflict re-emerges. We see in Afghanistan that without governance and stability, and without trust in institutions and a functioning democracy, how people’s lives can be turned around in a matter of months.
We must retain our commitment to conflict prevention and peacebuilding. I would like to see the strategy reaffirm the commitment to 50% of the budget going to those states and these projects and development initiatives, putting democracy, human rights, trust in institutions and the rule of law, fighting injustice and protecting security at the heart of our development work. It is long-term, tough work, working with people—not “to” people or “about” people. This work is vital and makes such a difference. We have a ready-made framework for these priorities and for our development work if, as the G7 said in Cornwall back in June, we are serious about launching a drive towards what was then called the “build back better” world—a slightly strange title for a new initiative but welcome in its positivity.
The sustainable development goals agreed in 2015, which the UK played such a role in agreeing, pulling together and then promoting, address the key social needs of the world. They address the economic growth and security that are required to deliver those needs, and they address the foundations of a better-protected planet and of peace and security that will ensure that will ensure that development can be consistent and sustainable. The integrated review said that achieving the SDGs by 2030 remained a UK commitment. In the words of the Prime Minister at the last election, it is a ready-made framework for sustainable development and for building back a better world. I hope that those goals are embraced as part of this strategy.
In conclusion, I refer to the speech made by the new Foreign Secretary earlier this month at Chatham House, where she laid out her priorities. She talked in that speech of a “network of liberty”, of putting freedom, in economic and political terms, at the heart of the UK’s vision in the world. Liberty comes in many forms. You cannot trade if you do not have anything to trade. Freedom from oppression, fear and violence is important, but the freedom which allows people to go to school, to earn money, to have a job, to see opportunities and to take them up—these are the freedoms which will change the world. Just as I said in 2010 that development is the mortar of peace, I believe that development is the enabler of freedom. I hope that the new Foreign Secretary remembers that when she agrees this international development strategy.
We can all do better than we did in 2021 as we go into 2022. We should clearly resolve this Christmas and into the new year that 2022 will be very different from the 12 months that we are leaving behind. I beg to move.
This strategy must lay the groundwork for rebuilding back to 0.7%, so it is critical that we get it right. While our work in international development is firmly in our national interest, I hope that we do not lose sight of the belief that tackling the world’s biggest challenges is a reason in itself. The strategy must recognise the continued need to work to end extreme poverty, to leave no one behind and to achieve the sustainable development goals ably championed by the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, whom I thank for tabling this debate.
I hope that the new international development strategy has women and girls at its centre. I have been very pleased to hear the Foreign Secretary repeatedly say that her focus will be on women and girls, and I look forward to seeing the detail of what that means. It is certainly needed: global progress on gender equality is under threat, and the welcome advancements of recent decades are at risk, with the coronavirus pandemic and its secondary impacts disproportionately affecting women and girls. We are seeing a shadow pandemic of gender-based violence. Women remain economically restricted in many regions and, in some countries such as Afghanistan, their rights are being radically rolled back.
Ultimately, I would like to see the UK adopt a fully integrated feminist foreign policy. I believe that this approach is the best way for the UK to enable women and girls to flourish. This in turn helps achieve sustainable peace, build our allies’ economic strengths, reduce poverty and support our national interest.
But, today, we are discussing the development strategy, so let us start there with a genuine feminist development policy. I have three suggestions for that, first on crisis response. Supporting gender equality around the world is one of the best investments the UK can make to help mitigate the impact of the pandemic, violent conflict and the climate crisis. The UK can improve the delivery of UK aid by using feminist principles to ensure that women and girls are included at every level of decision-making and that more resources are channelled directly to women-led organisations.
Secondly, the UK should lead the way to recovery from the pandemic by implementing the strong recommendations from the G7 Gender Equality Advisory Council. We will improve the pace and sustainability of economic growth if we adopt gender equality as a guiding principle for all economic recovery programmes.
Finally, sexual and reproductive health has sadly seen its funding cut by 85%. I declare my interest as co-chair of the APPG on Population, Development and Reproductive Health. Ensuring that women and girls can access vital health services and are able to make their own reproductive choices is critical to ending preventable maternal, newborn and child deaths. It is also essential to enabling all girls to receive a quality education to help them prosper, achieve their potential and contribute to economic growth in their countries.
Through the development strategy, the Government have a real opportunity to re-establish themselves as a leading supporter of the rights of women and girls to have control over their bodies and lives. The UK SRHR Network is calling for a commitment to spend an average of £500 million per year on sexual and reproductive health, which is only 4% of the UK aid budget and that is the same proportion as a year ago. That would make a critical contribution to supporting access to modern methods of contraception for the 218 million women and girls who want to avoid a pregnancy, and would help end the hundreds of thousands of maternal deaths and the millions of unsafe abortions we see every year.
I have just two questions for my noble friend the Minister on women and girls. First, will the Government publish the equalities impact assessment relating to the UK aid cuts? That has now been shared with the High Court as part of a recent legal case and, after nine months, I would welcome an answer on whether the Government will publish it. Secondly, I accept that we are waiting for the details on the announcement of the restoration of funding to women and girls to pre-cuts levels, but we should at least be told which year will be used as a benchmark for this.
The pandemic has impressed on us all that we are interconnected, and that the UK’s peace and prosperity cannot be secured unless progress on gender equality is made across the world. The international development strategy can and should help us achieve this.
In many cases, such clauses exempt the investing company from local taxes, customs duties and other charges that local industry has to pay. One survey of 88 FDI contracts noted that
“the stabilization clauses in non-OECD countries are more likely than those in OECD countries to limit the application of new social and environmental laws to the investments”.
The clauses either do not allow new laws to apply to the project or force host Governments to compensate investors for compliance with new laws, which might be for a cleaner environment, cleaner water, better wages or better pensions. Corporations are supposed to be compensated by poorer countries.
Stabilisation clauses are usually accompanied by arrangements for arbitration. However, the arbitration is through business panels located in Washington DC, Paris or London, which are empowered to make what are often called “final and irrevocable” decisions. Local people, who have never had sight of these agreements, have to ask foreign panels to adjudicate and they rarely succeed in bringing corporations to book.
One consequence of these arrangements is that local courts, lawyers and institutions of government do not develop the capacity to adjudicate on disputes. The enjoyment of human rights requires the state to develop appropriate regulation, enforcement and investigative systems. It cannot easily tackle discrimination at work, and gender and minority rights, without developing appropriate systems of corporate governance, law enforcement and a capacity to investigate suspect practices. However, the opt-outs guaranteed by stabilisation clauses and supported by the Government do not enable host countries to develop regulatory capacity, or the ability to monitor corporate activity, identify transgressors and meet their human rights obligations.
I ask the Minister to consider including the following items in the government strategy. First, the strategy should ensure that all FDI agreements by UK-based companies are made publicly available. Secondly, all FDI agreements must pass the human rights test. Thirdly, the UK Government must not broker any FDI agreement that constrains the power and right of host Governments to levy taxes and apply new laws to foreign investment.
But it is not just on this perhaps self-interested aspect of health that the cuts are impacting. Funding to the UN family planning agency, as we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, has been cut by 85%. The ACCESS programme and the women’s integrated sexual health programme have been cancelled, with projected cuts to family planning in 2021-22 estimated at over £132 million. The Foreign Secretary says that the Government are committed to prioritising women and girls, but once again their actions indicate the contrary. Cuts to sexual and reproductive health programmes not only undermine the health of women and girls but lead to unplanned and unwanted pregnancies, driving population growth, putting further pressure on resources and accelerating climate and ecological damage.
That brings me to the second plank in any strategy, which must be how we address climate change. Low-income countries are on the front line against climate change, despite being the least responsible for it. We have a solemn duty to use our aid budget to help those countries decarbonise their economies so that they can develop and grow without inflicting further climate and ecological damage to themselves and other countries. It is no good the Government telling us that they are increasing climate finance while slashing the overall aid budget. Low-income countries are not stupid: a cut in funding is a cut in funding, however it is distributed across different pots of money.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, underpinning democracy and the rule of law must be at the heart of our aid strategy, because without good governance there is little prospect of aid achieving its long-term success, and without the rule of law individuals cannot live in the security and freedom that they have a right to deserve, and economies cannot prosper. Again, however, the Government say one thing and do another.
Yesterday, the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, said in his response to a question about supporting Zambia’s democracy:
“The noble Lord talks about Zambia, and of course we have worked very closely with other key partners in ensuring that democracy not only prevails but is sustained.”—[Official Report, 15/12/21; col. 300.]
Yet the aid budget sends the opposite signal. Zambia, a country that in August saw free elections that resulted in an orderly transfer of power, will see its aid budget slashed by 58.6%—more than any other country in the southern Africa region. Malawi, whose judges acted without fear or favour to uphold the rule of law and defend democracy in 2020, receives the second-largest cut, at 51.5%. Meanwhile, Zimbabwe, a country I care about deeply but whose autocratic, quasi-military Government have looted the country, oppressed its people and ruined its economy, receives the smallest aid cut, and continues to receive more in aid than Zambia and Malawi combined. Can the Minister tell us what signal he thinks that sends to democrats on one hand and to dictators on the other?
Let me be clear: I do not want vital humanitarian aid to be cut to anyone, and I am appalled that mine clearance work in Zimbabwe has been halted, particularly given that those mines were planted by the former racist Rhodesian forces. But I want us to signal clearly that we will stand with democracies by providing enhanced and practical support to those countries that uphold democratic norms and the rule of law. We are doing the opposite.
I will give some specific examples of the urgency of this task. I co-chair the All-Party Group on Eritrea. We have held a series of meetings and hearings on the conflict in Tigray. This conflict erupted a year ago and has resulted in thousands murdered, injured and subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment, and thousands subjected to sexual violence as a weapon of war. The exact numbers are not known and will not be until a comprehensive and independent investigation is conducted. In northern Ethiopia alone, more than 7 million people now need humanitarian assistance. In Tigray, more than 5 million people need food and an estimated 400,000 people are living in famine-like conditions. Assistance there is hindered by the ongoing inability to move cash, fuel and supplies into the region. No aid trucks have reached Mekelle amid continued airstrikes. This catastrophe is manmade. Only today the Africa Minister, Vicky Ford, wrote to me to say that the situation in Tigray is catastrophic.
Tomorrow, the United Nations Human Rights Council will host its 33rd special session, which will focus on the human rights situation in Tigray and consider a mechanism for monitoring and investigating human rights violations in the country. The mechanism would preserve evidence of those atrocities and, where possible, identify those responsible—a crucial step towards justice and accountability—but I am told that a lack of funding may delay its establishment. I implore the Minister to investigate this, consider making a UK contribution towards the mechanism and encourage other states to do so.
To stop the flow of refugees, we must focus on the push factors of war, conflict, persecution and instability. As a trustee of the Arise Foundation, I have seen the interplay between trafficking and modern slavery and the mass movement of people. The 10 countries on the global slavery index with the highest prevalence of modern slavery and exploitation are in the top 50 fragile states, from Afghanistan to the Central African Republic. This conflict has disfigured life.
Let us take Nigeria, which has a flourishing domestic and international trade in human trafficking, from so-called baby factories to forced labour and sexual exploitation. It faces an array of complex challenges, from food insecurity and political instability to what many believe to be a developing genocide in the north, where an estimated 2.7 million internally displaced people are living in camps. More than half the population live on less than $1.90 a day, with millions facing acute medical needs, including 30% of the global cases of malaria and more than 20% of the deaths. As many leave their homes in search of a promised life, who can blame them? Over the past decade, we have given Nigeria £2 billion in aid, but too little of it has tackled the root causes of violence and built resilience and safety at local level.
In 2019, the Independent Commission for Aid Impact found that DfID did not fully support the long-term health of the civil society sector in its funding and partnership practices. That must change. We need long- term relationships with trusted parties, which will often be small, local institutions, often those within faith traditions. The integrated review invited focus on initiatives that produce
“the greatest life-changing impact in the long-term.”
The new strategy must surely address this issue.
Finally, a new development strategy should also combat the malign influence of the CCP as it subverts international institutions, including the Commonwealth, and uses belt and road to further its military interests, especially in Africa. If the Government address some of these things and those initiatives receive commensurate funding, they will deserve our support.
I suggest that we should have two principal approaches in our aid projects. First, we need to look very carefully at the Chinese belt and road initiative with a view to us having set initiatives where we put money into projects that are good for the development of the country but that we see through as projects. Forty years ago, I worked for the Crown Agents; it was quite close to here. It used to set up projects in what were then the colonies to help get them ready for independence. Clearly, we are a long way on from there, but the principle of us looking at a project, sending the engineers, costing the project and either finding or lending the money was quite sound, and many of the institutions, such as the Nigerian railway system, which was built by the Crown Agents, have stood the test of time extremely well. We need to look at our own belt and road initiative.
Secondly, there is soft power. I very much take the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, about the BBC. The BBC World Service is one of the great triumphs of British soft power. I am told that it is listened to by around 456 million people in the world. Its Arabic audience alone is more than 40 million people. This is an area where we can get over our values and get them over in a way that is acceptable, because the World Service is probably one of the finest neutral broadcasters in the world. By neutral, I mean that you do not turn it on and say, “We are going to find out what the Brits want today”. It is a genuine news service. I also say to the Minister: stop cutting the FCO budget. To move the FCO into increasingly grim surroundings is not a good idea. I ask the Minister to look at maintaining and, indeed, increasing the FCO budget. Those are a couple of points to think about.
In the longer term we need to invest in democracy and the rule of law. Many of the problems that we face, which the noble Lords, Lord Alton and Lord Balfe, have mentioned, have come about because of conflict and poverty and because there is no investment whereby people are committed to making their own country thrive and flourish. As the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, pointed out, sometimes this is because of endemic corruption. So, in the long run these things are vital to any strategy we have for leading the world by example. It is vital that we continue to stump up and provide observers at elections, and that we seek to work for the international rule of law.
Equally important is the issue of fair trade. If countries can develop their economies they will be able to provide for their own people, which would address a whole range of the issues that now confront us. The establishment of fair trade, the democratic imperative and the rule of law relate deeply to some of the other issues that a number of noble Lords have mentioned today. For example, in a world of fake news where people are simply being misled, the BBC World Service is vital. Personally, I am sorry that we seem to have lost so many of our libraries in some parts of the country. Certainly, when I was travelling in the 1980s and 1990s around remote parts of Africa, you would find people travelling in in order to read the British press. Nowadays the equivalent would be to get on the internet. These are things that make a tangible difference to our future.
Equally important is education. One of the things that this new global Britain can compete in is education. I find it extraordinary that we seem to be making it more difficult for people to come here; that ought to be one of our major engagements. Not only are we able to train people, and it is a win-win when they come here, but many of them then go back to their own countries and they will be the key people—the doctors, the politicians—making a real difference in their own communities. Any international development strategy ought to look holistically at how we develop some of the things we are brilliant at, and which we ought to be celebrating and building on. We are not going to be able to compete in many aspects of manufacturing, because they are costly, but we can contribute hugely to education, not least by training more doctors, for example, so that other countries can deal with the terrible pandemic that is ahead of us. I also echo what the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, said a few moments ago about cuts to the FCDO and the lack of investment in languages; at this time, we need to invest in these things.
Those are some of the issues that we need to navigate through the Covid pandemic if we are to develop our historic role in the world and play our part in building a stronger, calmer, more just and more peaceful world.
Covid has exacerbated existing gender inequalities, pushing women’s rights backwards. Women are losing jobs faster in the pandemic due to being in more insecure work; for example, in Africa 90% of women work in the informal economy. The UK’s present focus on girls’ education could not succeed without also addressing other issues, including combating the violence that many women face; ensuring healthcare, sexual health and reproductive rights; promoting economic empowerment; improving women’s meaningful participation in the public and political spheres; and funding women’s rights organisations.
I am also delighted to hear of the Foreign Secretary’s commitment to the Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict Initiative and the announcement of a summit next year. The PSVI was always going to be a marathon, not a sprint, and we need to keep building on the work already undertaken to ensure that sexual violence in conflict becomes a red line that should never be crossed.
The brutal takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban is such an unnecessary catastrophe. After 20 years of work there, not to mention the lives lost of our courageous military, the many who have sustained life-changing injuries and the billions of pounds spent on aid, it is a tragedy to see the country slipping backwards. I am also somewhat mystified by the US, which keeps talking about how Afghanistan must not become a haven for terrorism when one of the world’s most wanted terrorists, Sirajuddin Haqqani, is now the Afghan Minister of the Interior. Although the Taliban says that it has formed a Government, it has no experience of actually governing and has been committing brutal atrocities. So it is not surprising that a terrible humanitarian crisis is unfolding there, with many starving, and terrible reports of some women having to sell their babies to feed the rest of their families. I welcome the announcements of aid going in, but we must make sure that it is delivered to the grass roots through the UN and the NGOs. How do we ensure that it reaches the most vulnerable—those fearful and in hiding, the widows who can no longer go out on their own, the young men fearful of being seized to be recruited into the Taliban, the young girls fearful of being snatched to become brides for fighters?
I also hope that my noble friend the Minister can assure me that funding will be restarted for educational projects such as Leave No Girl Behind, community-based education and, of course, health projects. One of the successes of the last 20 years was the empowerment of women in Afghanistan. It went from a situation in 2001 where there were hardly any girls in schools to one where its brave women had come forward to take their place in society as politicians, doctors, teachers and army officers. But now the country has reverted, with not a woman in any senior position and the majority of girls denied access to secondary schools.
Women’s networks and organisations have played an important role in Afghanistan. I hope that we will continue to fund them in this difficult time. Who can forget the harrowing scenes in the summer at Kabul airport? I congratulate the Government on getting out 15,000 people in such a short time. Many of the high-profile women have had to leave, which has been traumatic for them. They find themselves in a strange country with no job and no means of supporting themselves. This is very hard.
Perhaps the Minister can tell me: why are we talking only to the men in Afghanistan about the future? The women who have had to leave wish to participate and have their voices heard about the future of their country. We must not desert them now; we have a moral duty to help them and ensure that they are at the table in a practical way. Can financial support be found for them so that they can organise and lobby too, for the future of their country? I look forward to the new international development strategy and hope that we can continue to support the most marginalised in the world in these difficult times.