International Development (Reporting and Transparency) Bill

I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the debate. I regard the Bill as significant. In the light of my earlier comments, I hope that the Secretary of State, who is still in his place, will recall that on a number of occasions I have paid particular tribute to him and also to the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer for their efforts, which I believe to be genuine, to deal with the problem of world poverty and the difficulties that arise in Africa, as well as in other countries in the developing world. It is often pointed out that international development is focused on only one continent. There are, of course, many difficulties elsewhere in the world. However, the problem of corruption, the issue with which I am primarily concerned, will not be dealt with by the Bill. The Bill provides for an undeniably useful exercise—the production of an annual report and statistics showing progress towards the United Nations 0.7 per cent. expenditure target, aid effectiveness and millennium development goals 1 to 7, policy coherence and millennium development goal 8 and transparency. At that point, I would have to pause to ask myself whether the observations that the Secretary of State thinks it appropriate to make about"““the contribution by Government departments to the promotion of transparency in…the provision of aid, and…the use made of aid provided””" would be meaningful without dealing with the problem of corruption. I recently spoke informally to a Minister in this Government; I will not disclose which one, or their sexual orientation—I am sorry, I mean that I will not disclose their sex. When I asked that person what they thought about what was going on in terms of corruption in such countries, they gave a clear indication that they were worried about it. I therefore assume that the Secretary of State himself is deeply worried about it. The observations that he thinks appropriate about the contribution made by Government Departments to the promotion of transparency should include observations about the lack of sufficient control inherent in the procedures that are made available to deal with this problem. Clause 6 says that there should be observations about"““progress in relation to…the prevention of corruption””." I would have expected that as part of those observations, recommendations would be made by the Secretary of State. The existing legislation on dealing with corruption and the audit arrangements that go with it is inadequate, and he could explain to the House exactly what could be done to improve the situation. I take the good will of the Ministers concerned for granted, but what distinguishes good will from action is whether there is the political will to deal with the problem, the scale of which is clear from the African Union report showing that as much as $148 billion a year is going in the wrong direction. That represents a quarter of the gross domestic product of the continent of Africa. The schedule to the Bill should contain specific information on that subject. It states:"““An annual report must include the following information for the most recent relevant period””." It goes on to list bilateral aid, multilateral aid, the amount of multilateral official assistance and various other complicated formulas almost entirely dealing with aid. That is all very useful. However, we should bear in mind the amount of aid cited in the report by the African Union, assisted by that renowned organisation, Transparency International, of which I am sure the Secretary of State is well aware. In March, the distinguished all-party group on Africa, which is chaired by the hon. Member for City of York (Hugh Bayley)—who I am afraid cannot be with us today for some reason—produced a report saying that the amount of money lost through corruption ““dwarfs”” the amount of money that goes into aid and debt reduction. We are talking about monumental sums. I have even seen a report suggesting that $220 billion has been wrongfully diverted in relation to Nigeria alone. As for the observations of the Secretary of State on what a Government Department may think or do in relation to the systems in place to guarantee that the money is going to the right place, one would expect as a minimum that some reference to the statistics and figures relating to corruption should be included under the schedule. Without that information, it will be very difficult to calculate the balance of proportionality between aid on the one hand and debt reduction on the other, both of which are dwarfed by the amount of money lost through corruption. There is a great need for that to be provided, as we are told that it is extremely important that we should relate what goes on in this House to what goes on in the minds of the public. We have often found that the best way to keep a secret is to make a speech in the House of Commons. I would be very surprised if anything that we say in this debate gets on to the BBC tomorrow morning, although there may be one or two references. The newspapers and the media in general pay little attention to parliamentary proceedings. That is deeply regrettable, undemocratic and counter-productive. The media give a great deal of attention to the question of world poverty, and there is a great deal of concern among the public at large, at whom the information in the annual report is intended to be directed. They should therefore have the information provided to Parliament about the extent of corruption, as analysed by the Government, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and other organisations. Despite my enthusiasm for the Bill’s general objectives, it will fall short if that information is not included in the annual report. I dare say that the people who are giving their £5, their 50p or their substantial charitable donations to emergency relief operations led by the likes of Bob Geldof and Bono, and others not of celebrity status in the Churches and non-governmental organisations, would be pretty horrified to discover that the accumulated money that they make available through their generous donations and their emotional commitment, which I share, to alleviating poverty in the rest of the world—