Official Development Assistance and the British Council

(3) a further sum, not exceeding £3,725,498,000 be granted to Her Majesty to be issued by the Treasury out of the Consolidated Fund and applied for expenditure on the use of resources authorised by Parliament.—(Rebecca Harris.)

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing us this estimates debate on official development assistance, more commonly known as foreign aid, and the British Council. It is clear how much passion and interest there is across parties on this topic.

Over the last two years, there have been considerable and brutal reductions in overseas development aid at a time of unprecedented global need. When other nations across the globe are stepping up, the UK seems to be walking away, and that is why today’s debate is so important. Public and parliamentary interest in aid has never been greater.

I wanted to spend the debate looking in detail at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s spending plans. I wanted to scrutinise how UK aid, cut drastically to 0.5% of GNI at a time when more aid is needed, is being spent in the most effective way possible. However, the information needed to carefully check that spending simply is not being shared by the FCDO.

The Select Committee on International Development has had to fight tooth and nail to extract whatever information it can from the Government. A pattern of behaviour is emerging that demonstrates this Government’s contempt for parliamentary scrutiny. That cannot be allowed to continue.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for the comments that she has made so far and for her work on the Select Committee. In the post-Brexit age, we hear a lot from the British Government on sovereignty and being able to make sovereign decisions, but is not the crux of the matter—as this major issue, the cut to international aid, shows—the fact that we are not making decisions on the basis of parliamentary sovereignty, and that the Government really should be paying more attention to the views of this House?

That is absolutely the nub of my speech. At a time when we ought to be able to scrutinise the detail of the spending of taxpayers’ money—particularly at a time when cuts are being made to it—that is not in the gift of this House. It is in the gift only of a very few Ministers, and that should concern us all.

When my Committee received the main estimate from the FCDO this year, we were genuinely shocked. It looked very different, with considerably less detail than last year’s equivalent. Budget lines had been altered, with the majority of spending from the former Department for International Development lumped together under one heading. That obscures the size and distribution of the cuts to aid spending.

It is customary for the Government to consult relevant Select Committees prior to making such radical changes to the presentation of estimates. Needless to say, that did not happen. Surely, at a time of increased parliamentary interest in aid spending, we should expect more detail, not less. With such little detail and information, Parliament cannot know exactly what is going on and what it is agreeing to. How can we make an informed decision without a basic breakdown of where the FCDO plans to spend in a particular country or on a particular theme?

Sadly, that is entirely consistent with the lack of information and transparency provided by the FCDO throughout last year. Add that to the lack of willingness to engage with my Committee, and Members’ questions being dodged or simply ignored, and Parliament faces a constant uphill struggle for the most basic details that we should be entitled to.

The Government have said that they will return to spending 0.7% of GNI on aid “when fiscal circumstances allow”. My Committee, and I am sure other Members in the House, has lost track of how many times we have asked the Foreign Secretary to define what is meant by that. We are getting no closer to an answer. We have repeatedly asked for a country-by-country breakdown of funding allocations for this financial year. Instead, we got only a worryingly short list of countries where the UK will spend bilaterally this year, with no figures attached. It is simply impossible to perform proper scrutiny without those figures.

My hon. Friend is making an excellent point on the fact that the more barriers there are to aid, the more difficult it is to deliver. Does she agree therefore that it is a moral and economic imperative that this Government do everything in their diplomatic might to reauthorise and readopt the cross-border crossings in north-east and north-west Syria to relieve the millions of people there at serious risk of loss of life?

I absolutely support my hon. Friend’s calls for that border crossing to be reopened. It is a time-limited ask, and the International Development Committee wrote to the Foreign Secretary over two weeks ago asking for that very thing—to open those borders and keep them open so that aid can get in to help those desperate people—and we still have not received a reply.

In Vietnam, teams clearing land mines are being made redundant, as there is no funding for their project. In the Central African Republic, a project fighting the worst forms of child labour will be forced to close early. How does it make sense to invest in these transformative projects over years and then cut the funding at the very point they are about to realise their goals? It is a waste for those communities and a waste for the UK taxpayer, who has been funding it.

This debate also considers the role of the British Council, an organisation that has experienced huge challenges as a result of the pandemic. Unable to offer its normal range of paid-for educational services, budgets have been squeezed dramatically, impacting upon other programmes and leading to office closures around the world. Indeed, from next week, the British Council is starting the redundancy process for between 15% and 20% of its jobs.

The British Council is one of the best examples of soft power that I know, and the Government are standing by and letting it crumble. That is set against a growth in cultural institutes from other states—namely China’s Confucius Institutes—that are creeping across the planet. That is not exactly the action of an outward-looking, global-focused Great Britain, is it?

The Government say they are proud of the UK’s aid spending, but hiding figures and failing to respond to my Committee’s questions are not the actions of a Government who are proud. They seem like the actions of a Government who are trying to cover up their shocking reductions in funding and the devastating results: the girls who will not go to school, the children who will not be vaccinated and the families who will not have access to clean water. Once again, I ask the Minister for three things: to publish the individual country allocations for this financial year; to provide immediate clarity to organisations implementing UK aid programmes on their funding allocations for this financial year; and, most fundamental of all, for the Government to detail the steps that they will take to return to spending 0.7% of GNI on ODA.

There will be a seven-minute time limit on Back-Bench contributions, with the clock in the Chamber and on the screen for those participating virtually.

It is a pleasure to follow the very good speech from the Chairman of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), and I echo her comments in thanking FCDO staff and aid workers around the world for the work that they do, often, as she said, in extremely difficult circumstances. I would also like to say to the Minister that I am grateful to Lord Ahmad for the discussions he is having with me on modern slavery and initiatives on modern slavery, and those discussions are continuing.

Before I come to the specific points I want to make on the estimates, I will make a general point on this debate, because I believe that, in response to my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) last week, the Prime Minister implied that this debate was a vote on 0.7%. Of course, it is a vote on the estimates for the FCDO. It cannot be used as a proxy vote on 0.7%, and I hope the Government will accept that and recognise that the calls for a vote on 0.7% are still there.

There are two issues that I particularly want to raise. The first is that, in the limited information available to us on aid spending from the Government, there seems to be little suggestion from the Government that they are actually paying attention to the important linkages between the different elements of spending in the aid budget. This is often an holistic matter, and these things cannot just be looked at in silos.

To give just one example of this, our right hon. Friend the Prime Minister is rightly very keen to encourage girls’ education around the world. It has been a theme of Conservative Governments now for some considerable time. We have taken it up in G7 meetings, and we have encouraged others around the world to take up that theme. Of course, a girl who is educated is less likely to be lured into modern slavery. However, if we cut the programmes for dealing with modern slavery, that girl may not be able to get into education because the slave drivers and the gangs—the criminal gangs—may have got to her first. We have to look at these issues holistically and at the linkages between them.

I hope my right hon. Friend will forgive me for interrupting her, but she is making such an excellent point, and exactly the same argument can be made on tackling gender-based violence. If we want to succeed in getting women through education, we must tackle gender-based violence. It is a comprehensive package, and that is why we need to be securing the 0.7%.

Indeed. My hon. Friend is absolutely correct. I gave just one example, but actually we have to look at aid funding holistically, and look at the linkages between areas and the impact of cuts in one area on another area. There is no evidence, I am afraid, from what I have seen from the Government, that that is what they have done. It does appear that they have just cut in silos. We see, for example, that the Global Fund to End Modern Slavery has an 80% cut in its funding and there is a 25% cut in funding for girls’ education, but these are linked. I urge the Government to look at those links.

I want to note that, in their response to the fourth special report of the Select Committee, in late September —28 September—last year, the Government said:

“The Government’s manifesto made clear that we would proudly maintain our commitment to spending 0.7 percent of our national income on development—a commitment enshrined in law and one to which the new Department will honour its responsibilities. The Integrated Review, which will inform the priorities and direction for this new department, will set an ambitious vision for the future of the UK as an active, internationalist, problem-solving and burden-sharing nation. Investing 0.7 percent of Gross National Income…on international development is at the heart of that vision; it shows we are an enterprising, outward-looking and truly global Britain that is fully engaged with the world.”

That was at the end of September 2020, and in November 2020 the funding was cut. Either one hand does not know what the other hand is doing in the Government, or they were just trying to calm everybody into a sense that everything was going to be okay before they actually wielded the knife on this particular issue.

The second point I want to make is about the impact on the UK’s presence on the world stage of the decisions that have been taken. This relates not just to ODA spending, but to the spending of the FCDO in general. I note that the Select Committee, in response to the decision to merge DFID into the FCO, said that it had

Does my right hon. Friend realise that the position is far worse than was set out when the so-called merger took place? What has happened is that DFID has been completely dismantled. Even in the days of her predecessor, Lady Thatcher, there was an overseas development administration within the Foreign Office, which was a sort-of department for development with a Minister of State in charge of it. There is nothing like that today. The whole thing has been completely smashed to pieces, as she is saying in her speech.

I thank my right hon. Friend for clarifying that point so well. If we are going to continue to be respected as a country that leads on overseas aid, it is absolutely imperative that we not only spend the money, but that we also have the expertise to ensure that it is being spent properly. Hosting receptions in the British embassy, and getting to know local businessmen and politicians, is a different skillset from knowing how to deliver aid on the ground logistically, so that British taxpayers’ money is spent in the most effective way.

Maintaining that expertise is particularly important if the Government are to be believed, as we hope they are, when they say that they are going to restore the 0.7%. When a programme is cut, we cannot just say, “Well, you are not having that money this year, but next year you are going to have it.” People will no longer be employed to give the aid on the ground. We need the expertise to be able to build the programmes up. We are looking at a perfect storm, where not only has the money gone away but, when the time comes—I hope it will be next year that the Government restore 0.7%—we will find that the people are not in the Department to ensure that that is being done, and being done effectively.

I say to the Minister that I sincerely hope that we can restore the respect that we have had around the world, through our funding and our expertise, restore the 0.7%, look holistically at the aid spending and not lose DFID expertise. If we do that, we might be able to return, as was said in the Government response to the fourth special report, to being

“an enterprising, outward-looking and truly global Britain that is fully engaged with the world.”

Sadly, at the moment, the message is rather different.

It is a pleasure to follow the effective speech by the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May). I suspect that we will see a good deal of consensus across the House this afternoon on these points.

The Government’s sudden default on their commitments, enshrined in law, and the way the cuts are being implemented, with minimal information for this House, has damaged plans, partnerships and trust that have built up over many years between the UK Government and international partners. At a stroke, the Government have succeeded in damaging the UK’s reputation as a reliable partner, at a time when they are supposedly developing the UK’s role as a global player. All of this is purportedly to ensure that we can shoulder the burden of their disastrous covid policy, while conveniently playing into the supposed prejudices of their new and possibly fickle supporters.

These cuts have been rushed, with no consideration or assessment of the impact they will have on the people who receive UK aid or the effect on UK-based overseas aid projects, particularly small-scale initiatives without the robust structures or funding to absorb large-scale cuts made by their main or only real source of finance. There has been no real consultation, not least with this House, and there has been a failure, or more likely a refusal, to understand and take into account the likely impacts, or to engage with partners and communities, so as to try to minimise the damage, if that is at all possible.

Throughout this process there has been poor communication with partners. The Government have failed to provide dependable and predictable information, and the repeated failure to deliver on promises of forthcoming decisions and information has left organisations and projects unable to plan or manage the situation.

Let me turn for a moment to small-scale projects in Wales. Hub Cymru Africa reports that the closure of the FCDO’s small charities challenge fund—the most accessible grant scheme up to £50,000 for Welsh NGOs—is hitting, for example, the Teams4u project in Wrexham. The closure of the FCDO’s partnership grants of up to £250,000 is affecting the successful delivery of projects such as Interburns. Perhaps the Minister would like to explain why the partnership grant of £249,000 to Bees for Development Monmouth for its work in Ethiopia is being cut by £102,000, thereby closing the project early. That explanation might be useful for his ministerial colleague at the Wales office, the Under-Secretary of State for Wales, the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies). United Purpose in Cardiff has been working in Malawi for 32 years. Its work has been rated A++ for performance and value for money by the FCDO itself. It has had to drastically reduce its work, with only weeks of warning, due to Malawi’s law on staff notices and severance packages. Some Welsh NGOs are considering closing down entirely.

I will not go over the point about 0.7% and 0.5%, because I think the House knows my view. I share absolutely the views of the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), who have made their point—and, in fact, my point—extremely clearly.

Instead, I will focus on the integrated review and the merger of the Departments, and what it actually means according to the statements of Her Majesty’s Government compared with the actions on the ground. I would suggest that there is a slight dissonance between the talk of global Britain engaging directly with nations, and the cuts to bilateral Britain while we are reinforcing multilateral action. Now, I understand why we have taken those decisions: we have legal contracts with multilateral agencies and therefore we have legal obligations with them that are harder to break; so instead we are undermining our own policy and weakening those bilateral ties.

It seems to me—perhaps the Minister will be able to explain why I am wrong—that we are wracked over the small print while others are racking up the newsprint of their achievements, and that is a mistake. It is a mistake because, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead made clear, we need to be demonstrating our place around the world. I support the ambitions of aligning the two Departments, and indeed of bringing the Department for International Trade and perhaps other Departments much closer together with the Foreign Office. My former colleagues in the Ministry of Defence will not like this terribly, but I support the idea of having a Foreign Secretary who is the strategic mind for the British Government overseas, including on the deployment of, for example, carriers. HMS Queen Elizabeth is in port in Cyprus today. Although the Foreign Office should have had a very clear view on her role and deployment, and was absolutely right to support the ships going through international waters—or Ukrainian waters, as they were only the other day—I would never argue that an ambassador should be the admiral of a fleet or that a political councillor should be the captain of a destroyer. The same is true, I am afraid, in respect of aid spending; there is a technical expertise here that is not the same as the strategic oversight of foreign policy, which is why I would like to see some of this coming back and being reinforced as the technical skill it really is.