International Development (Reporting and Transparency) Bill

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Buckingham (John Bercow), who is always very eloquent in his passion for development issues. I, too, am pleased to speak as one of the supporters of the Bill and to congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr. Clarke) on introducing this important and timely measure. My right hon. Friend is of course an expert in private Members’ Bills; in fact he is the only Member of Parliament for whom my mother put pen to paper—she wrote to congratulate him on his Bill on disability. He has a strong track record of interest in both these matters in the House. The Bill not only bolsters the Government’s commitment to eliminate poverty around the globe but creates a new window of opportunity for the increased transparency and accountability of international development assistance and policy, and, as many Members have mentioned this morning, for Parliament to engage thoroughly in detailed debate on these issues in the House. As a member of the International Development Committee and chair of the all-party group on debt, aid and trade, I have been inspired and humbled by the idealism and commitment demonstrated by literally hundreds of thousands of members of the public—our constituents—particularly over the last 12 months, in the Make Poverty History campaign. It has been a long, long journey, and it is how I became involved and engaged in political discussion when, over 20 years ago, I became a voluntary campaigner for Oxfam. The issues of debt and aid, far less trade, were pursued only by a very small minority. The degree to which that has changed in Government and in Whitehall is like the difference between night and day. I remember taking part in an Oxfam campaign to secure aid, any aid at all, for Cambodia after the expulsion of the Khmer Rouge. I remember visiting and lobbying a Foreign Office official about the Government’s policy on Cambodia; he told us with great pleasure that Cambodians really were not that important in the grand scheme of things because they had no natural resources, the country was landlocked and it held no political power: why should the UK have any interest in their plight? It has taken many years and hundreds of thousands of ordinary people, working together in faith movements, through NGOs, through trade unions and taking a strong moral interest in these issues, to keep going with a consistent campaign to urge us, as their political representatives, to take note of what they want this country to represent and to be. I had the greatest pleasure, before I came into the House, of taking part as a volunteer in many of those activities. I took part in the march in Birmingham for the G8 summit in 1998 when 70,000 people turned up from all over the United Kingdom. I went there and back in a day in a bus from Glasgow. Many people attended a major public demonstration on something that had no direct influence on their personal lives. I thought that 70,000 was the maximum we could get, but of course we had 250,000 people in Edinburgh last year in the largest public demonstration in Scotland’s history. Ordinary people from all walks of life came out, people of all ages and all creeds and colours, to say that they wanted this country to continue to take a lead role in eliminating poverty in the world. I am pleased that all the main political parties have indicated their support for the campaign and accepted the case for substantial increases in development aid. The Bill will help to ensure that the UK Government, of whatever political flavour, can be held accountable on those people’s hopes and demands. Although 2005 was a fantastic year for international development, with unprecedented public mobilisation and significant steps taken by the international community on aid and debt relief, we all know that there is still very much that we need to do. As a member of the International Development Committee, I am well aware that we need to ensure that substantial increases in aid over the next few years are spent wisely. The rise in DFID funding will be approximately 20 per cent. per annum for each of the next four to five years. That is unprecedented for any Department in our history. It will undoubtedly present the Government with a major challenge. Multilaterally, either at the European Union or in international finance institutions, there will also be significant increases in aid. There have been increases by other EU members, by Japan, and, to be fair, although it is from a very low base, by the United States of America. We will need to ask hard questions about how that money will be spent. We need vigorously to examine how we ensure that the outputs—the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Angela Browning) correctly said that this is about outputs and how they affect the millennium develop goals—are going to be achieved. That is why the Bill is important in ensuring that part of the process comes within the House. I wholeheartedly support the Bill’s focus on the millennium development goals, which have been the internationally recognised targets over the past six years. They provide a focus for development work and a means to harmonise the provision of aid throughout the world. Increasingly, there are issues about donor harmonisation. Someone in Tanzania facing up to 80 different donors has different standards of how the aid is applied, different accountancy dates and different audit procedures, which is a recipe for inefficiency. We need to try as far as possible to act internationally and cohesively to achieve the best aid efficiency. We must also remember, as the hon. Member for Buckingham (John Bercow) correctly said, that we are discussing basic rights that every human being should have—to food, sanitation, shelter and education. They are the core of human rights. The Bill’s endorsement of the millennium development goals comes at a crucial time. Unfortunately, although the G8 summit led to substantial progress and a real shift forward, the subsequent UN world summit in September witnessed a worrying lack of commitment and urgency from some world leaders. More importantly, a third of the way towards the 2015 target date, many of the millennium development goals and the nations involved in them are worryingly off track. Fifty countries are going backwards on at least one millennium development goal. As a region, sub-Saharan Africa is failing on every one of them. That does not simply mean that world leaders will have to lament missing yet another target. It actually translates into death and suffering for millions of people across our globe. Reaffirming the UK Government’s commitment to those goals will reinvigorate global debate on the urgent action needed to turn those promises into reality.