International Development (Reporting and Transparency) Bill

My Lords, I was delighted to hear my noble friend Lady Whitaker so ably detailing the Bill’s provisions and strongly commending this humane and long overdue measure to your Lordships’ House. She did so with compelling concern, commitment and charm. Her speech alone justifies a Second Reading for the Bill. With my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, I very much look forward to the maiden speeches in the debate of my noble friend Lady Quin, and the noble Lord, Lord Cotter. Like my noble friend Lady Whitaker, I congratulate and pay tribute today to my right honourable friend Tom Clarke on steering the Bill through the House of Commons with such skill and success. Speaking as a serial legislator—both as a private Member and a Minister—I hold his achievement in admiration. By all the tests of the good MP, he is an outstanding parliamentarian. For me this is a deeply evocative moment. It calls to mind the warm all-party support he received in enacting his Private Member’s Bill that became the Disabled Persons (Services, Consultation and Representation) Act 1986. My roles then were as Tom’s co-sponsor of his Bill, and secondly, to lead for Her Majesty’s Opposition at all stages of its progress through the House of Commons. I described him at that time as a young parliamentarian of high promise. Now he is one of even higher performance. Very few parliamentarians have succeeded in taking two Private Members’ Bills—and in different policy areas—to the statute book. I believe Tom Clarke will soon become one and this measure, like Tom himself, deserves well of this House. One would not have had to out-prophesy the prophet Isaiah to predict—after his success in the ballot for Private Members’ Bills for the current parliamentary Session—that Tom’s chosen measure would again be one to relieve and reduce preventable human suffering. At Report in another place on 16 June, Tom wisely reflected that Private Members’ Bills are defeated not only by determined opponents but often also,"““by their friends and supporters””." He advised his supporters to,"““stick to the brevity to which I have committed myself””.—[Official Report, Commons, 16/6/06; col. 1008.]" Even more important today is the fact that there is now no parliamentary time-allocation left for debating further amendments to this Bill in the House of Commons. Thus amending it here would end any realistic prospect of it becoming law. That is the backcloth against which this debate is taking place. In her speech, my noble friend Lady Whitaker emphasised the Bill’s importance in making executive government more accountable. Unquestionably also its enactment will help parliamentarians more effectively to discharge their duty—some would say sovereign duty—to subject policy-making in this deeply sensitive and crucially important field to much more detailed scrutiny than is possible today. Who among us here can have any doubt that the combined wisdom of this House in scrutinising the annual report the Bill requires will improve policy-making on issues such as aid, debt and trade; or have any doubt that more accountability will benefit those most in need provided, of course, that it is not just about listening and responding to well-heeled lobbyists but hearing the cries of those now unheard? Improved accountability, transparency and scrutiny can and must be about ensuring that most help from the resources we provide reaches those most in need. That this is not happening now was graphically illustrated by UNICEF’s classic report The State of the World’s Children 1994 which stated:"““When so much could be done for so many and at so little cost, then one central, shameful fact becomes unavoidable: the reason that these problems are not being overcome is not because the task is too large or too difficult or too expensive. It is that the job is not being given sufficient priority because those most severely affected are almost exclusively the poorest and least politically influential people on earth””." Today that ““shameful fact”” is well exemplified by the incidence of blindness across the world. Four out of five blind people live in the third world and four out of five of them are preventably blind. Yet as that inspired crusader against avoidable disabilities, my friend the late and still widely mourned Sir John Wilson, so clearly demonstrated, the cost of saving people in the third world from preventable blindness has been falling as dramatically as the incidence of preventable blindness in many of the poorest countries has increased. Dr Samuel Johnson wrote:"““How small of all that human hearts endure,      That part that Lords and Kings can cure””." By hastening Royal Assent to this Bill—the Tom Clarke Bill—this House can refute that cynical assessment of what parliamentarians acting together can achieve in righting the wrongs endured by the weak and vulnerable. It will not be the first refutation of Dr Johnson’s cynicism—take the case of Wilberforce and human slavery—but never was it more necessary than it is now to wield all the influence we have to ensure that right is done in transforming endurance into lives worth living for the poor, vulnerable and afflicted people this Bill can help. We were reminded by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister only this week that too few aid pledges are made for real and too many for show. This Bill is about being real and I, too, commend it unreservedly to the House.