My Lords, I was not really intending to speak on this amendment, but I want to get to the bottom of this point. I entirely agree with my noble friend Lord Fowler about the importance of that programme and I pay tribute to the work that is done all over the globe in combating AIDS and to the organisations involved.
This is not about the merits of particular programmes; it is about the means by which the money is managed because of the lack of flexibility, which the amendment would provide for. Paragraph 15 on page 8 of the summary of the NAO report says:
“The need to increase spending was a factor the Department considered when it decided in autumn 2013 on the size of promissory notes it subsequently issued in December 2013 to the World Bank’s International Development Association and to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. The Department’s
decision to issue more notes to both organisations in 2013 did not alter the total value of notes it planned to provide them and did not affect the content and timing of the programmes”.
So we are not talking about the programmes; we are talking about what happens as a result of having to find programmes in year where you have no flexibility. The advantage of going to multilateral organisations is that the expenditure counts towards the target when it is issued, even though it might not be incurred until two years down the line. That does not apply to bilateral programmes. Therefore, it creates a bias against bilateral programmes in circumstances where the budget needs to be managed. It is not about the merits of the programmes; it is about how the rules and the corset that is being imposed by the provisions in this Bill result in bad decisions potentially being made.