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We face an evident lack of empathy with the private sector and its vital contribution to market-driven growth. Nowhere is there less consensus between our public and private sectors than in the pursuit of African development. Development economists do not write their papers on private-sector development; they prefer aid, with its top-down structures. They also prefer accountability for public money to the risky world of business and, worse still, to African entrepreneurs. Having told us of the importance of economic growth driven by the private sector, they explain that unfortunately it will not happen. Corruption will prevent it; medical problems will make it too difficult; shaky legal systems with unpredictable results will deter investors. We need to look back to 1750 and judge how these issues look here.
To be a successful developer in Africa, you need both bilateral agreements and the leverage to see that they are maintained. You also need to build a school and a clinic. The Chinese will understand that; DfID probably does, too, but cannot cope with the logic. We need a change in direction: DfID should contract out all the increases in the aid programme to players who understand the private sector. My time is up, so that change of direction will have to be discussed on another occasion.
11.56 am
Lord Wallace of Saltaire: My Lords, we on these Benches welcome the White Paper, as we have welcomed the role of DfID under the new Labour Government. It is one of new Labour’s great successes. We have welcomed the work of DfID under its successive Secretaries of State, the breadth of its approach to development and the way in which—particularly from my perspective, given my professional background—it has integrated aid and development policy with broader issues of security, conflict prevention, conflict resolution, nation building, and defence and development.
There is, rightly, a box in this paper on Sierra Leone, in relation to which the British Government did help, crucially, to pull Sierra Leone back from a total breakdown of order into what is beginning again to be the rebuilding of a viable state, society and economy. Sadly, that is in sharp contrast to continuing American policy in Africa, where we see again in Somalia military intervention to bring down the first Government for 15 years who have maintained some sort of order, without any apparent concern about how one rebuilds order and confidence among the people.
We also welcome the emphasis in the paper on the importance of education and the role of women. I
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I had some problems. First, I have to admit that I find that new Labour’s rhetoric and style, which is most evident in the opening chapter, stick a little in my gullet. I would have loved to edit it to about 50 per cent of its length—it would have lost none of its meaning; there was rhetoric about targets, delivery, over-simplification of problems and claims of novelty. I remember the noble Baroness, Lady Chalker, talking about the importance of good governance in Africa. I have read many UN human development reports— most of them contained rather deeper analysis and were more soberly written than this White Paper—talking about the importance of global good governance. I worry a bit about the build-up of expectations here—a 2015 deadline to eliminate world poverty. That threatens another of the cycles of building up hopes followed by disappointment, of putting in aid and discovering that much of it disappears through corruption, so taking us round this sad cycle again.
Development is a long-term generational process of social and economic transformation. The noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, talked about England in 1750. It took Britain 150 years to go through this painful process of modernisation from the deeply corrupt government, society and economy that we had in the 18th century to the on-the-whole non-corrupt system that we have today. There are echoes here of the American Administration’s proclamation that they are going to bring democracy to the Middle East, as if these things can be done within five or 10 years. They cannot; it takes us a very long time.
I question also the overemphasis on idealism in the report. We have to sell this to our publics and the publics abroad as enlightened self-interest. It matters to Britain that Africa and south Asia should be stable. When Governments and societies collapse, their desperate, poor and intellectuals arrive here. The Somalis in Britain are a very good example of that. It is thus in our interest to help them stabilise their economies and have Governments that make it possible for them to live and develop there. The same is true about health and a range of other issues, including corruption, which overlap on to our shores.
I know that other noble Lords will talk about corruption. There is a very coy reference on page 28 which says that,
- “the UK will help Governments to investigate and deal with alleged corruption through the courts—especially where money has flowed through UK jurisdictions”.
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Offshore financial centres and the City of London have allowed a great deal of corrupt money from Nigeria and elsewhere to flow through UK jurisdiction. I read some months ago that the current Nigerian Government consider that Switzerland has been more co-operative than the United Kingdom in chasing the Abacha money. I hope that DfID is actively engaged in persuading other departments of Her Majesty’s Government to pay more attention to that.
I welcome the reference to a global arms trade treaty but we also have to recognise again the conflict within Her Majesty’s Government between selling arms to unstable parts of the world and asking for constraint on arms trade. Socio-economic development in the Middle East is very poor. Selling large quantities of British arms to unstable Middle East countries does not help to stabilise or to promote long-term development in that region.
Lastly, I worry about the overload on the United Nations. The responsibility to protect is a splendid principle but UN peacekeeping is now almost at breaking point. There is reference here to the African Union as a partner. The African Union is now, for a weak organisation, immensely overloaded. There are limits to what we can do and we should not pretend that we can do more than we can. Nevertheless, we give an overall welcome both to this report and to the development strategy of Her Majesty’s Government—their commitment to global development strategy and to a multilateral approach.
12.03 pm
The Lord Bishop of Chelmsford: My Lords, as chair of Christian Aid—I declare that interest in this debate—I am enormously grateful to the noble Baroness for giving us this opportunity today and to the Government for the White Paper.
Every time I am confronted by these issues, I cannot get the words of Jesus out of my mind.
Those words are not some fatalistic doctrine suggesting that there is nothing we can do; they are words that encourage generosity, but they also encourage us to face reality. Poverty is persistent, deeply embedded in human experience and profoundly resistant to all our endeavours to shift it. It is an evil, inhuman experience demanding that every generation faces it, fights it and seeks to overcome it. None of the weapons that we set up to tackle it is on its own adequate to the task. The debate and the issues it raises require us to be honest. I was particularly grateful to read page 17 of the Government’s White Paper where the orange and red represent what we are not going to achieve. The whole column on sub-Saharan Africa is coloured orange and red—predominantly red. That makes for very depressing reading, but I am hugely grateful for the honesty on those matters.
Aid is important and it is vital to achieve the 0.7 per cent target. However, it will not shift the issue on its own. We talk about development and building the capacity of the people to fight the evil. That is right and important, but it is not enough if it is not accompanied by a profound change in the culture and the structures of power in the world. We think of the large issues that
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We are also faced with the wider international realities. I was particularly struck by the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, on Kenya. My much publicised visit last summer found similar incidents in the Samburu area. On the drought, local people in the mountain regions told me that there they no longer experience the cool mists of spring. Global warming is an increasingly big issue and raises for us big questions about our common responsibility.
We need all those tools—aid, development, structural change and a commitment to tackle the issues within our responsibility—but, above all, we need to be persistent and consistent. I do not know how many Members of the House have made new year’s resolutions and have now abandoned them, but the poor in our world do not need new sets of resolutions; they need those we have taken on to be fulfilled.
We are told that Africa is a high priority in the Government’s work. They are driving that forward by raising not only the level but the quality of aid; working with the grain of other people’s cultures and the frame of their chosen priorities; building their capacity; and accepting our obligations to work for change and improvement in the international systems of trade and our global duty to the planet. Poverty is a powerful and persistent evil and it requires graft and sheer hard work by everyone working together to begin to shift it from the seat of power.
Secondly, we must have a passion for justice and a commitment to bring hope and hold on to it in people’s lives. I well remember visiting a project with street children in rural Kenya. The local church provided food and sustenance day by day for the predominantly teenage boys living on the street. Out of their own resources, local people are tackling the problems, but they need partnership and help. When asked what they wanted, the reply was clean water in showers, good schooling, people reconnected with their homes and families where possible, and the development of skills. Every step forward brings hope.
I have said previously in this House to Her Majesty's Government and I will say again that we must work with the grain of civil society if we are to succeed in this matter. On the basis of the White Paper, I suspect that we need a fresh discussion with the Government on the partnership between civil society agencies, including the faith communities, on how we unlock the vibrancy of those communities with which we are seeking to work. If I can in any way help with that, as chair of Christian Aid, I would be delighted to do so.
Thirdly, we need to tackle our own lifestyle. Every household needs to ask: where our is food coming from, who is profiting, what is our consumption doing to the world in which we live and are we creating a sense of interdependence?
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Poverty will not be tackled primarily by money, programmes of action or even grand schemes and commissions, however important these are; it will be tackled by the profound moral energy and spiritual vision of people here and across the world, joined together in a common task.
If you ask why this topic is rising in importance in our community today, the answer is because of the stirring in the hearts and minds of growing numbers of people—the woman priest in Kenya running the street project, the young man who confronted me in Chelmsford High Street before Christmas requiring me to sign an Oxfam motion about poverty, and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, said, the tens of thousands of people on the streets at the G8 summit. It is the people who will shift these matters. We here in Parliament and in government must respond to that growing public energy and concern about these matters in the world. The White Paper opens up opportunity for us, and the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, has given us the chance today to put our energies into the debate.
12.11 pm
Lord Archer of Sandwell: My Lords, once again my noble friend Lady Whitaker has placed the House in her debt by initiating a timely debate on a subject which so often is crowded out by other and sometimes less important business. DfID, too, has earned our gratitude for a thoughtful White Paper which sets out not only the action plan but the context in which it requires to be taken. The right reverend Prelate understandably concentrated his contribution on the social and economic needs, and he did so very movingly. I hope he will forgive me if I confine my contribution to Chapter 4, which speaks of the need for peace and security, and Chapter 8, which calls for revision of the system of global governance.
The world has developed a wide network of intergovernmental institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which are rarely the subject of television bulletins or, I confess, of conversations in my local. But they exercise enormous power over everyday life in all countries. As Chapter 8 points out, many of them were established in the years following World War II, for a totally different world.
The One World Trust—of which I should declare I am privileged to be president—has been conducting a project to assess the accountability and transparency of a wide range of global institutions in which, for the most part, they very willingly contributed. The trust has received generous encouragement from my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for International Development, who gave the keynote speech at the launch of the first report on 4 December, and even suggested that DfID itself might be subjected to a similar assessment. I do not believe that it would need to fear that experience.
The White Paper points out that if world poverty is to be eliminated, there needs to be agreement on some structural reforms. It speaks of fragmentation and duplication among United Nations agencies, a matter
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It is easy to list the situations where the United Nations might be open to criticism—although the criticism, of course, is of the member states which take the decisions, often pursuing their own agenda. The list could be matched by an impressive list of achievements, of selfless and sometimes heroic service in the field. Often, statistics do not tell the whole story. The achievements may be reflected in what does not happen: the populations which do not suffer starvation; the refugees who do not die; the conflicts which do not break out. But the White Paper is right to draw attention to what needs to be done. It calls for a unified United Nations presence in any one country based on a single programme with one leader, one office and one budget.
Perhaps most importantly, while recognising what has been done in conflict prevention, there are tragic examples where the United Nations and national Governments have been spectators when the need was for intervention. Darfur threatens to provide another tragic example. Chapter 4 of the White Paper has a subheading,
If the object is to improve the quality of life for all the world's peoples, that needs to be built on peace and the rule of law—a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire. Certainly conflict keeps people poor. It absorbs a high proportion of the resources that need to be used for eliminating poverty. The cost of relief and reconstruction following the war in Rwanda was estimated at $2 billion.
There is a further dimension. Resources needed for food and development are diverted into the purchase of armaments. It has been calculated that countries in receipt of development aid spend about £75 billion annually on military expenditure. Indonesia is in debt to the United Kingdom to the extent of $1.408 billion, more than half of which represents defence contracts, some of them for Hawk jets which have been used to destroy Papuan villages. So emerges a vicious cycle. Poverty leads to resentment and conflict; conflict leads to further poverty. In paragraph 4.9, the White Paper points out that investment in the prevention of conflicts is far more cost-effective than a post-conflict rebuilding programme. That means, for example, investment in a system for gathering and co-ordinating early intelligence and a swift reaction capacity.
It is good to read in paragraph 4.8 that the United Kingdom supports projects to assist developing states to take weapons such as small arms out of circulation, to reform and professionalise armed forces and to improve legal systems. Perhaps when she replies my noble friend can tell us a little more about that.
Perhaps the most urgent peacekeeping reform would be to expedite the reaction of the international community to a humanitarian crisis. The reaction to
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The expression “joined-up government” is rarely heard these days, but DfID has sought to create seamless policies across departmental divides. As we all share one aim—to create a better world—that sounds like common sense.
12.18 pm
Lord Garden: My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, for making this debate possible. Normally, I would want to do as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Archer of Sandwell, did and focus on Chapter 4, “Promoting peace and security”. I have worked with DfID on Global Conflict Prevention Pool strategy in the past and pay tribute to the work that is done. The chapter is very good.
However, the debate has turned out to be perhaps more timely for considering Chapter 3, the chapter on corruption. I declare an interest as an adviser to Transparency International UK on prevention of corruption in the official arms trade. Chapter 3 of the report, “Supporting good governance internationally”, makes superb reading, and I congratulate DfID on the very clear undertakings that the United Kingdom makes on those pages. In paragraph 3.3 we are going to,
“Encourage responsible behaviour by companies. Tackle corruption by closing ... loopholes that allow people to get away with illicit gains”,
Paragraph 3.5 talks about the OECD’s Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises and notes the difficulty that some countries, including the UK, have had responding to allegations of bad conduct. It declares that,
Yet, as your Lordships will be aware, on the Thursday evening before the Recess, the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General came to this House to announce the discontinuance of the investigation by the Serious Fraud Office into BAE Systems over payments relating to the Al Yamamah programme. The words that were used by the Attorney-General seemed to undermine the excellent anti-corruption proposals that are in this DfID report. He said that,
- “it has been necessary to balance the need to maintain the rule of law against the wider public interest”.—[Official Report, 14/12/06; col. 1715.]
That is the argument that will doubtless be welcomed by corrupt leaders around the world. In the light of this decision, it is difficult to read the declarations on page 39 of the report without a great degree of cynicism. I was particularly struck by the assertion that the UK will:
The reports that appeared, predominantly in the Financial Times, about concerns in the City of London over the effects of the Attorney-General’s statement
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I ask the Minister to explain when she winds up the debate whether DfID now has a strategy to restore the credibility of the UK in this key area. The wrong message is already being taken up abroad. In Ghana, the Accra Mail of 18 December—in an article entitled “BAE Systems: Whose corruption?”—was quick to point out the double standards. The correspondent concluded by saying to Mr Blair:
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