International Development (Reporting and Transparency) Bill

First, I join the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope) and other hon. Members in paying tribute to the late Eric Forth. When we last discussed the Bill and the money resolution on the Floor of the House, he made clear his intention to continue to scrutinise the Bill. I am sure that I speak for the whole House in saying that his absence makes the House feel emptier today. Once again, I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr. Clarke), who rightly drew the attention of the House to the fact that while the Bill has been significantly amended its substance remains the same. As he said, the Government have sought to take on board concerns expressed on Second Reading, including anxiety about the absence of the millennium development goals from the Bill. I encourage hon. Members to resist new clause 5, because those internationally agreed goals, which chart the steps that must be taken to combat poverty, deserve to be included in the Bill and provide a rallying point for all donors, including the Government. New clause 7 deals with aid effectiveness and policy coherence. It is right that they should be included in the annual report, but the need for such measures has already been addressed by the Bill. The hon. Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood), reflecting on his visit to Afghanistan, usefully pointed out the need for much better co-ordination of work by non-governmental organisations and others throughout the international community. He will be reassured to learn that the Government accept that argument, and we have sought to implement the international agreement that was reached in Paris in March 2005 on the better harmonisation of aid. We wish to make progress in harmonising and aligning our aid with aid from other international donors, and we shall encourage them to do the same. Amendments Nos. 2, 3, 4, 5, 26 and 27 deal with the way in which the annual report is produced, the information that it includes and the question of further information on development assistance that may become available after it is published. It is sensible to include a review provision in the Bill to enable my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to update the House if further information becomes available, so I urge hon. Members to resist amendment No. 2. It is clearly sensible on the grounds of economy, efficiency and effectiveness, which all hon. Members wish to encourage, to allow the Secretary of State flexibility in the way in which he seeks to align the Bill’s requirement for an annual report with other information published by the Department. I encourage the House to resist amendments Nos. 4 and 5, as paragraph 7 of the schedule makes provision for occasions when figures are not available for an annual report, specifying that they must be included in a subsequent report. A number of hon. Members dwelt on amendment No. 8, which deals with European Community aid to which the UK contributes. I accept that we should report on such aid, and I am surprised that hon. Members did not acknowledge the fact that a provision requiring such a report is included in the Bill. I draw hon. Members’ attention to paragraph 3 (a) and (d) of the schedule, which refer to the need to report on European Community and other multilateral aid. 12.30 pm Amendments Nos. 11, 16, 9 and 10 relate to the number of countries on which we report and how the choice of those countries is made. We had a long discussion on that in Committee. As hon. Members have acknowledged, I made it clear that it is our intention to report for the duration of this Parliament on 25 countries currently covered by our public service agreement with the Treasury. I did, however, accept the representations made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill and other hon. Members on Second Reading that we should increase in the Bill the number of countries on which all future Governments will be required to report. That figure increased from 10 to 20. The hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Mark Simmonds) asked me whether we would continue to report on our work in Iraq. I assure him that we will continue to do so in the reports that are published as a result of the Bill. Amendments Nos. 17, 19 and 22 are similar in purpose and relate to whether Government agencies and non-departmental public bodies are covered by the Bill. I can assure hon. Members that under the terms of the existing text, Government agencies and non-departmental public bodies are potentially covered. If they provide aid, we will report in the way set out. On amendment No. 13, the clause as it stands sets out much more clearly the requirements on the Secretary of State. Again, I urge hon. Members to desist from pressing the amendment. The amendments that were subjected to particular scrutiny were those dealing with corruption, especially amendment No. 15. I assure the hon. Members for Stone (Mr. Cash), for Christchurch and for Shipley (Philip Davies) that the Government take extremely seriously the need to deal with corruption. The hon. Member for Stone paid tribute to the work of Transparency International. I am sure it will not have escaped his attention that the Department funds much of that work. He rightly paid tribute to the work of the all-party group chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for City of York (Hugh Bayley). We welcome that report on corruption and the Government will respond to it in due course. The need for more work by the Department to address the issues of governance and corruption surfaced a number of times in the consultation on the White Paper. I hope that the forthcoming White Paper will give the hon. Member for Stone further confidence that we continue to address those issues. If he wants even more detail about the considerable amount of work that we are doing to fight corruption, I would be more than happy to meet him to get through that at greater length. Amendments Nos. 23, 24 and 25 relate to the need for definitions of ““poverty””, ““sustainable development”” and ““corruption””. Those terms are in common parlance and we do not need to write definitions into the Bill. Lastly, on amendment No. 29, which related to the loss of moneys through fraud, let me reassure the House that we already have robust approval, procurement, risk management and reporting arrangements to ensure that aid is spent for the purposes intended. All our aid is subject to independent audit and the National Audit Office has consistently given an unqualified opinion on DFID’s accounts. We have recently gone further by establishing a fraud response unit so that we can drill down even further on the matter. I hope that with those remarks I have addressed the concerns of Opposition Members and that they will refrain from pressing any of their amendments to a Division.