International Development (Reporting and Transparency) Bill

My Lords, I have interests to declare as a trustee of Saferworld, a former director of Oxfam and a current member of the Oxfam Association, and I suppose that I should mention as relevant in this context ministerial experience long ago both at the Foreign Office and in overseas development. My first real joy is to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Cotter, on his maiden speech. By any yardstick it was an outstanding and moving speech, and it augurs well for the contributions that he will make to the future deliberations of the House. He brings to us his industrial experience; his service in local government and in the other place as a respected spokesperson on trade and industry; his continuing interest in green issues, which will be more and more dominant in all that we seek to do in politics; and, as we have heard today, his proven support for justice in the world. I was deeply affected, as I am sure other noble Lords were, by the way in which he described his experiences of Rwanda. If I have learnt anything in life about development, it is that the key is people. All over the place there are recognised and unrecognised heroes, and what he said rang very true to me. In congratulating the noble Lord, I hope it is in order for me to say how delighted I am that my noble friend Lady Quin is with us. I have had the highest regard for her contribution in the other place, both in government and out of it. I felt that Westminster was the loser when she seemed temporarily to disappear into the north-east region. It is good to see her back; we hope that she will remain as committed as ever to the north-east, but she will bring to all that we are doing very special qualities and experience. It really is good to have her here. This is a practical and highly relevant Bill. I join in thanking my noble friend Lady Whitaker for having introduced it so well in this House. I also pay tribute to my old personal friend in the other House, Tom Clarke, for his long-standing commitment to development issues, evidenced in what he has made possible in the Bill. The Government’s commitment to fulfilling the 0.7 per cent within a specific timescale has been a very important record. It sets standards, as has been said, for other parts of the world. The Bill will be helpful in ensuring the effective delivery of this aspiration—in other words, it will ensure the fuel for the task. As has already been suggested, success in the cause of eliminating world poverty will depend on other key contextual issues as well. Perhaps I can refer briefly to some of them. Governance is crucial; the quality, character and calibre of governance in any particular country are key to success. In this context, it is right to mention corruption. I make only one other point in mentioning corruption: I hope that as a society we hold the mirror to ourselves and we do not only tell other people to do as we say they should do but that we ask ourselves whether we are setting the standards, in all respects, that we are asking them to follow. How far, when corruption occurs in impoverished countries, is its origin traceable to activities by people in this part of the world? There are the issues of multilateralism and bilateralism. I am unashamedly a multilateralist, again for very practical reasons. I think it makes a nonsense of development to see hard-pressed Administrations and Ministers striving to establish a strategy when people are queuing at their door and coming up with—competing, even—different programmes, trying to persuade them to link up to their particular interest and approach. The more one can get a cohesive approach, the sounder will be the approach to development. If we are to see a continuing emphasis on multilateralism, we will need to know a little more—perhaps the annual reports will provide a good vehicle—about the conditionality that applies in multilateral programmes. Fortunately, in this country, we have seen the light and set our face against tied aid, but in multilateral programmes there is a good deal of tied aid still, and we need to know more about the conditions, as we do about the arrangements for our aid going through other people’s bilateral programmes. There are also issues relating to the European Union. One of the tasks of the European Union is, surely, to play an active role in helping to co-ordinate the bilateral programmes of the members of the European Union, so that we are not inadvertently pulling against each other but are always together trying to ensure that we are pulling alongside the governments of the developing world. There are the issues of climate change, and all that we are trying to do in the third world can very rapidly be undone by what is happening in the context of climate change, which hits poor economies particularly hard and the poorest people extremely hard. Responsibility for making a success of policies on climate change rests with the kind of domestic policies that we have in countries such as the United Kingdom in the relevant spheres. There is a need for preventive measures against disasters, because the poor particularly suffer from disasters and catastrophes when they occur. There are issues of the globalisation of pandemics. I was concerned, as I am sure were other noble Lords, that discussions about pandemics that we have been having of late tend to focus on how we will protect the wealthy and privileged people of the world. What will be the consequences for the majority of humankind out there in the countries to which we are referring? Of course, if pandemics strike, they strike the economies of the countries with which we are concerned, as we have seen tragically with AIDS. Then there are the issues of conflict. When I was director of Oxfam, I was struck by the fact that more than half our programmes in the world were dealing with the consequences of conflict. If we are serious about development, we must give pride of place to measures to combat the arms trade, control the small arms that do so much of the killing, tackle conflict resolution, support peace building and ensure effective reform of the security sector. Perhaps the most important issue of all is that of the systems of global finance and trade within which we operate. It is not simply a matter of ensuring that the agendas of the international financial institutions address the issues of poverty and of the poorest people in the world. We must ensure that the agendas of the international financial institutions reflect the priorities of the disadvantaged people and disadvantaged nations of the world. They should feel a sense of ownership of those agendas and not find themselves in a position of simply responding to the agendas of the relatively privileged. If we are to see sustained development and sustained success in the cause of eliminating world poverty, security and stability are essential. Grotesque differentials in wealth and the exclusion of highly intelligent—sometimes, well educated—people from any influence over power in the international community are highly relevant to the issues of sustained development. If those feelings of alienation and frustration continue unabated, there will be insecurity: there will be conflict. Therefore, we have to tackle the issues of the redistribution of political power in the world if we are to make sustained success in building society in the future. Those are imperatives if we are to get it right. I welcome the Bill. It is a refreshingly practical, targeted Bill. It will ensure that we have the wherewithal for the task. I thank my noble friend Lady Whitaker for having brought it into the House. I am sure that we must respond to the entreaties of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay. We should give it a quick and clear passage, but in so doing, let us face up to the strategic contextual issues without which it will not be able to achieve its objectives.