My Lords, the Government will publish the multiyear official development assistance programme allocations for 2026-27 and 2028-29 in the coming months. These allocations will be informed by consultation and impact assessments, and will provide greater predictability for delivery partners as we transition to spending 0.3% of GNI on ODA by 2027. The UK remains committed to international development and is modernising its approach in order to deliver greater impact, value for money and transparency.
My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for her Answer and her engagement on this difficult set of decisions over recent months. There are those who are already suggesting that the drastic cuts announced earlier this year should be supplemented by further cuts in the Chancellor’s Budget, which will be announced at the end of this month. Can the Minister provide any reassurance that this will not, in fact, be the case and that, although we will still have a challenge, we will at least be working within the budget that was announced previously? Do the Minister and the Government recognise that those who are most affected by conflict, violence and instability are those who suffer from the least development and the worst circumstances? In the new, reduced budget, will there be priority for conflict-affected and fragile states, a focus on those states, and a specific budget for conflict prevention and peace- building, which can help us ensure that peace leads to development?
I completely agree with my noble friend about the impact of conflict on populations. We see this in Gaza, Yemen, Sudan and Myanmar. He is absolutely right to draw our attention to that. We focus a great deal on our work in fragile states and speak with our friends in the World Bank to keep them engaged in fragile contexts to make sure that they—who have far more money than we will ever have through an ODA programme—invest in these countries, as that really matters. However, I am going to disappoint my noble friend, in that I will not comment on the forthcoming Budget. I do not know what is in it; I am not expecting any further decisions to reduce our development assistance, but I do not think it would be wise for me to speculate at this stage.
My Lords, we all know that women and girls are disproportionately affected by conflict. There are, I think, about 116 conflicts raging around the world. The UK is a penholder for the women, peace and security agenda at the UN Security Council. We talk about leading the world on this agenda. Can the Minister reassure the House that we will continue to support women in conflict and not cut support to them at this time?
It is vital, particularly at the moment, when many of our ideas and values regarding women are being challenged internationally, but we are determined that our work to support women will continue. We want to see this reflected through everything we do, and we are working on the detail of how we responsibly mainstream our work on gender throughout our programming. That is part of the story, but the other thing we need to do is to use our voice and influence internationally to make it clear that our position on these issues remains constant, even though others may change.
My Lords, given the impact of cuts in aid and the advance of Russia and China as funders in developing countries, will the Government seek an urgent initiative to promote public and private debt relief to ease the burden in those countries? Will they also do more aid matching to engage the British public, and work with the private sector to encourage development-led partnerships between the public and private sectors?
The private sector has an enormous role to play, and we have a responsibility to enable that to happen in a far larger way than it has in the past. I am leading an emerging markets and developing economies task force with the City of London; we have big players around the table, including the ratings agencies, HSBC and Aviva. We are seeing real success in breaking down the barriers to get that investment into developing economies.
The noble Lord is right to raise the issue of debt. Some countries spend far more on debt repayment than they do on health and education public services. That is not sustainable and we need a solution. Various options are available, and we support all of them to find which are most appropriate for the different nature of debt, to which the noble Lord alluded, in 2025.
My Lords, when the noble Baroness publishes the ODA allocations in the coming months, will she tell us how much of that money, instead of being spent to help the poorest people in the world, is in fact being used to fund tax cuts in Mauritius under the Chagos surrender deal?
I think the Chamber speaks for me on that. Our development assistance is all about supporting the poorest people in the world and empowering them to enable them to develop and support themselves, alongside our life-saving humanitarian assistance.
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, talked about supporting nations and communities in conflict. I hope that the Minister will also focus on challenging areas, such as access to education for women and girls, particularly in the most challenging parts of the world—for example, Afghanistan and Pakistan. We have to continue to support those women because the men who govern Afghanistan, in particular, do their best to stop girls getting access to education.
The noble Lord is right that in Afghanistan in particular—but not only Afghanistan—there are real problems in accessing education for girls. We will continue to support work on that in those places. More widely on education, especially for girls, the best thing we can do is support countries to strengthen their own education system so that they are able to educate their children and that girls get the protection that access to education provides. We look not only at access but at quality and standards so that, when a girl has completed her education, she has a good standard of literacy and is able to move on, support herself, and contribute to her community and country in the way that so many women want.