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Lord Brett: My Lords, I echo the many tributes to the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, for introducing the debate so well, and for setting the scene so comprehensively. When you are batting as far down the order as I am, you are expected neither to bat as
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First, there is the missing elephant, an African elephant that is also a Chinese one: the role of China in Africa. Go to most African countries and you will see a mausoleum, a parliament building or a sports stadium—or in Addis Ababa, a whole ring road—produced by Chinese labour as a gift from the People’s Republic of China. You will also see the Chinese active in other areas, and we must see the significance of that both in terms of what it might do for the advantage of Africa and because China is in many cases getting a more sympathetic hearing in Africa than our own Government. Yet I believe that the position taken by Her Majesty’s Government in this White Paper and through DfID’s activities is right and that we should support it. I am not commenting on the attitudes of the Government of China.
Another area where the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, hit a boundary was the role of the private sector. At least, that is the observation from both expatriate and indigenous members of the private sector in Africa, who do not feel that DfID particularly understands how they can help and be part of the process. I do not know whether that is a justified criticism, but I add it as a comment to the debate.
I also find myself in favour with the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Judd. I sympathise entirely with civil servants in their task. We have a high quality Civil Service in this country—albeit that the Home Office and some departments have been criticised—but I particularly commend and am grateful for the civil servants in DfID. They have the quality of the Civil Service in general and bring a commitment to the task. I speak and declare an interest as the United Kingdom representative of the International Labour Organisation, a specialist UN agency. I have been involved in the negotiations of a partnership agreement. The noble Lord, Lord Crisp, made the valid point that projects are not really a way to carry out development work. The partnership approach much pioneered by successive UK Secretaries of State is much more effective for agencies doing the work and countries receiving the assistance.
We recently negotiated a £20 million partnership agreement with the UK Government, to be implemented over a coming period. The UK civil servants who negotiated that were rigorous and demanding and did an excellent job on behalf of Her Majesty’s Government. I do not know whether all my colleagues in the headquarters division of the ILO, who negotiated with them, would share that appreciation, given that they were put through some very tough tests and questions. Of course, the scrutiny continues. There is conditionality on money being paid, and the objectives that have been set have to be reached. I have no criticism of any of that. It seems to me the right way to do development business on behalf of the people in the developing world and the British taxpayer.
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I have slight concern about how those things that we rightly try to do are perceived in the countries in which we try to do them. I come back to the perception from an African viewpoint. I was at a meeting where President Mugabe got a standing ovation for a considerable attack on the position not only of the United Kingdom but of what we might call the northern hemisphere in general. The ovation was given by an audience who were not wholly sympathetic to the points that he made. He is a speaker of some force, which no doubt played a part, but sometimes there is a sense that we are telling people in the developing world what to do while we ourselves are not doing it. I shall not comment on corruption but a number of noble Lords made very apposite points on that.
Another area where I think that we are sending mixed signals is the Government’s policy, as I understand it, to vote against any increase in the budget of an individual UN agency that goes beyond zero real growth. That, of course, is not understood by many developing countries and the majority of governing bodies of agencies, which see an increased requirement for techno-cooperation and the fact that in a small minority of countries, but mainly developed countries, there is a taking back from the multilateral system of funding in favour of the DfID approach. There is nothing wrong with the DfID approach but if you do it at what appears to be the expense of the UN system, you seem to apply the conditionality of reform by starvation. The UK could gain more in its persuasive attempts to reform the UN—I immediately accept that there is much room for reform there—if it did not have such a rigid attitude in its budgetary approach to agencies. Clearly, agencies differ; their priorities differ. I support the UN reform of more coherence that the UK Government want to see. I was a member of the Royal Commission on the social dimensions of globalisation, which reported in 2004. We highlighted the need for coherence and cohesion between United Nations agencies, the bank, the fund and, indeed, the WTO. The present danger concerns structural reform within agencies. Do we get rid of or merge agencies? That may well get in the way of achieving better policy requirements. I particularly support the view that the UNDP could have a co-ordinating or leadership role. However, conflict could arise where it provides services that it is at the same time commissioning other agencies to provide.
On the basis that I have not spoken for my full allotted time, but have been at the crease longer than the average English tail-ender in cricket matches over the past few months, I leave your Lordships to ponder my remarks.
1.24 pm
Baroness Northover: My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, for securing this debate and for all her work in this area. It is a very welcome paper, building on the work which led up to Gleneagles and the 2005 Make Poverty History campaigns. At Gleneagles, significant pledges were made, not least to get all who needed it on to ARV treatment by 2010. In
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As others have said, this is a wide-ranging and very thoughtful paper, though the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, gives it an A, while the noble Lord, Lord Lea, gives it a low B and the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, thinks that it can be published as a thesis. It covers the foundations of development through good governance, peace and security, financial security, addressing climate change, trade, education, the treatment of HIV and improvement of health systems, reform of international organisations and so on. The wonderful photos bring home what we are talking about—the lives of children, women and men. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford rightly pointed out, the huge amount which needs to be achieved is very starkly shown in the MDGs chart.
The White Paper is in many ways very general; it does not spell out anywhere in great detail how this vision is to be delivered. In this excellent debate many noble Lords asked for further work and details in various areas, including the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, on micro-finance, the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, on the private sector and the noble Lord, Lord Brett, and others on China and Africa, which the International Development Select Committee is looking at this afternoon. It was decided, however, that governance should be the overriding theme of the paper, as in DfID’s view that underpinned all development. Considerable space is given to that. DfID’s heart must have sunk, given all that it had invested in the improved governance agenda, when, as other noble Lords have said, the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General announced in this House the need to,
- “balance the need to maintain the rule of law against the wider public interest”.—[Official Report, 14/12/06; col. 1712.]
in relation to the SFO, BAE and Saudi Arabia.
My noble friends Lord Garden and Lord Wallace of Saltaire and the noble Lords, Lord Hannay and Lord Judd, the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, and others pointed out with great cogency just how the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General’s Statement on BAE undermines much of what the paper stands for. Whatever the Attorney-General has said about this case setting no precedent and showing no green light to anyone must be viewed with considerable scepticism.
The foreword to the paper by the Prime Minister states:
in which he included the promotion of better governance across the world. Yet when the Prime Minister’s views were apparently sought in regard to BAE, what happened to this laudable aim?
Hilary Benn says in his introduction to the document that,
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When he opened the debate on the paper in the Commons on 26 October he stated that,
- “one thing is clear beyond doubt—without good governance we will not be able to defeat poverty, or climate change, or war, or famine. That is why we put good governance at the heart of this White Paper”.
Was the Secretary of State for International Development consulted about the decision regarding BAE, and if not, why not? After all, the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and the Secretary of State for Defence were. The noble Baroness may say that the case held no relevance to DfID, but DfID’s White Paper makes it extremely clear that it does. As the Secretary of State further stated in the Commons:
“Governance is ... an international issue. Bad governance can be caused or made worse by the actions of rich countries and their companies. For every bribe taken, there has to be a bribe giver; for every stolen dollar that is spirited out of a developing country, there has to be a bank account somewhere for it to go into. That means that we have to be more effective in stopping bribery and, where money is stolen, in finding it and giving it back”.—[Official Report, Commons, 26/10/06; cols. 1737-39.]
The document itself states that the UK will adopt a new “quality of governance” assessment to guide the way in which the UK gives aid, that they will launch a new £100 million governance and transparency fund, and that they will work internationally to tackle bribery, corruption and money laundering. We have heard from the noble Lords, Lord Chidgey and Lord Parekh, how much the UK needs to do in this area.
“Corruption hurts poor people, and it harms women in particular. When health staff demand bribes for medicines, teachers for enrolling children in school, or local government officials for providing water connections, it keeps people poor”.
The paper states that corruption damages economic growth by increasing the cost of doing business, it siphons off resources that should go into public services, and it undermines the accountability of political leaders and officials to their citizens. We agree. The paper goes on to say:
That is what DfID thought in July 2006. Who will now do that?
The paper mentions the Africa All-Party Parliamentary Group’s report on corruption, The Other Side of the Coin, which many noble Lords were involved in and which recommends working to reduce the risk of UK businesses being involved in bribery in developing countries. The paper says that the Government will implement almost all of the report’s recommendations. Will the noble Baroness tell us what the Government intend to miss out? Might it be following through on SFO investigations into bribery by British companies when threatened by another state? When this paper came out in July, Christian Aid noted that it over-focused on corruption only within developing countries. As the organisation put it, it takes two to tango. Indeed.
I feel for DfID, the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, and the noble Baroness the Leader of the House, given their track records. This is an excellent paper
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DfID worked on this paper for the best part of a year. The Secretary of State made a number of key speeches early last year as part of taking the paper forward. NGOs and many others were consulted widely. The paper could have been a predictable manifesto of what DfID wanted to do, but instead it was decided to have this strong theme of good governance as underpinning all development. That was bold and welcome. I wish the department the very best in seeking to implement it, first and foremost within its own Government.
1.33 pm
Baroness Rawlings: My Lords, I too would like to add my congratulations to noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, for securing this debate on the DfID White Paper and for her tireless championing of international development issues. It has been a most interesting discussion, with thoughtful and knowledgeable observations made from all sides. I am sure your Lordships will agree that these have only shored up the premise that this is very much a British agenda with strong, cross-party support and not one of party politics.
As my honourable friend Andrew Mitchell MP stated in another place in response to the Statement on the White Paper, we on these Benches are,
- “as determined as the Government to ensure that the British contribution to lifting the living standards of the poorest, combating disease and illiteracy, promoting good governance ... is effective and successful. We may have differences of opinion about how best to deliver some of the noble aims and objectives set out in the White Paper, but those aims and objectives have our wholehearted support”.—[Official Report, Commons, 13/7/06; col. 1494.]
We are only two days away from being exactly six months on from the White Paper’s introduction. I hope that in her reply the noble Baroness the Leader of the House will be able to update us on the progress of as many as possible of the 152 commitments the department undertook in the five chapters of this publication, particularly in the light of past criticism from the Financial Times that DfID tries to pursue some schemes that are too grandiose.
There are so many specific questions I could make in relation to the proposals of the White Paper but I will limit them here to six short ones. What measures has DfID taken in conjunction with the FCO to push for a reduction in the number of UN agencies? The noble Lords, Lord Hannay and Lord Wallace of Saltaire, both pressed for changes in the United Nations. Do Her Majesty’s Government think the African Peer Review mechanism has overcome its difficulties? If not, should it be the key part of the proposed quality of governance assessment? Will such assessments be undertaken independently of the department? What criteria will Her Majesty’s Government use to establish in which countries they will act under the Responsibility to Protect programme; and do they admit that there
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The first is gender inequality. As Amartya Sen reminds us, women often bear the greatest cost of poverty and indeed AIDS. Female empowerment and projects that help improve the standards of living for women and girls can play a significant role in helping alleviate poverty. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford rightly suggested the importance of water. Improved access to water will make certain that the hours that were spent collecting buckets from far-off wells can be spent in schools.
I totally agree with the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, that the success of women-based projects in helping development can be seen too by the numerous small-business ventures, especially those supported by the micro-credit schemes of the Nobel prize-winning Muhammad Yunus, head of Grameen Bank.
Secondly, there is a lack of recognition of the growing role of China—as mentioned by my noble friend Lord Eccles in his remarkable speech and by the noble Lord, Lord Crisp—and India within international development, both regionally and globally. The geopolitical landscape is changing and poses new challenges for not only DfID, but almost all government departments in one form or another. Some may argue that it is hard to justify why we still provide funding to China when it can afford to provide aid itself to other countries. It had a trade surplus of £15 billion last October alone. The paradox is that millions of people in western China remain very poor. We cannot forget too that there are more poor people in India than in the whole of the African continent. I would be interested to hear the thoughts of the noble Baroness the Leader of the House on this issue.
Thirdly, I share the concerns of several noble Lords that the private sector appears to be defined in a limited way in the White Paper. There is a role for business, in terms of not just the creation of employment and growth but social justice. Not all multinational businesses are the demons that they are made out to be. Corporate social responsibility is being taken seriously. Multinationals, studied by the economist Jagdish Bhagwati, tend to pay between 40 per cent and 100 per cent above local wages, and working conditions tend to be higher than in local competitors. Multinational companies’ most overlooked benefit is that they bring people from countries all over the world closer together, helping greater understanding between cultures, and transferring capital, resources and skills across borders. They can help to drive social change and female emancipation.
Even though this is an internationally based debate, many of your Lordships have stressed that we cannot discuss good governance and poverty without also looking to our own record. In the context that poverty is relative, we on these Benches are concerned about how short-term government thinking has been on poverty-related issues in the United Kingdom. The narrow focus on a wholly inadequate poverty target, followed by complacent trumpeting of supposedly
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There can be no doubt that there is still a long way to go. Each day, one in six human beings has to live on less than $1 a day. Pregnancy and childbirth claim a woman’s life every minute. Some 5,000 children die each day due to lack of water and sanitation. Some 3 million people are killed by AIDS each year. Those are just a few of the saddening facts that have been highlighted today. While we must not lose sight of the hill that we have to climb, we cannot forget to take the overview or to look at the big picture. Never before have so many people been liberated from extreme poverty so quickly. The number of people subsisting on $1 a day has declined from 16 per cent of the world’s population in the 1970s to 6 per cent today. In 1820, 84 per cent of the world’s population lived in absolute poverty. Today, this is down to one-fifth.
Meanwhile, commentators such as Allister Heath suggest that there is growing evidence that as countries become richer they eventually also become greener, cleaner and healthier; or as the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, so clearly said, growth is the best way to reduce poverty. The interconnected nature of the pathways to poverty necessitates an interconnected response. We cannot forget that there is hope, as long as we can remove the barriers that hold back prosperity, but at the same time empower people and countries to remove the shackles that lock poverty in, both nationally and internationally.
1.43 pm
The Lord President of the Council (Baroness Amos): My Lords, as usual in our international development debates, we have had a debate of high quality. I thank my noble friend Lady Whitaker for opening the debate and giving such a comprehensive introduction to it. I am also grateful to noble Lords for their contributions and their general welcome for the White Paper, although of course I listened very carefully to the criticisms. I entirely take the point made by my noble friend Lord Parekh about the importance of showing positive images of what is going on in developing countries and not just negative ones.
Making Governance Work for the Poor is the Government’s third White Paper on international development. It builds on the commitments in the 1997 and 2000 White Papers, and it sets out how we will deliver the promises that we made at Gleneagles. It explores some of the big challenges facing us at the start of the 21st century, such as climate change, corruption and conflict. We are all aware of the
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I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Rawlings—who not so long ago was extremely critical, in the Queen’s Speech debate, of the impact and effectiveness of aid—that I welcome her change of heart today and support for the DfID agenda. I understand why the Conservative Party now considers that it is not a party political issue. It does not want to be reminded of its track record, when we saw a decline in the aid budget over 18 years. I remind the noble Baroness that it is this Government who have had a target for eliminating child poverty in Britain. I cannot remember any Conservative Government ever setting such a target.
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