My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Astor for his amendment, for being consistent with the points he raised at Second Reading and for the manner in which he did it. I am most grateful for that, and I will attempt very briefly to address his points. In so doing, I wish to put on record my appreciation for the points that the Minister made. There are two aspects to this: forward expenditure, which is part of wider plans in existence, and the possibility of other factors which mean that, outwith the scope of the responsibility of DfID, the international target would not have been met. I suspect that that gets to the core of my noble friend’s amendment.
On the first point, paragraph 15 of the NAO report has been cited. I am sure it was an oversight that paragraph 16 was not referred to. That states:
“Promissory notes accounted for 19% of the Department’s ODA in 2013, similar to the level in 2012”.
Given the NAO’s findings, I do not think that this is an issue that needs to take up much more of our time in Committee.
Let me address the point made by my noble friend. The question is whether elements of this Bill complement the International Development (Reporting and Transparency) Act 2006 and the existing mechanisms through which DfID, the Treasury and the ONS report on information to do with programme profiling, budget decisions and external factors and provide sufficient information to allow Parliament to understand why a target has not been met. With the mechanisms that we already have in place—including, importantly, Section 6 of the International Development (Reporting and Transparency) Act 2006 on the methods for transparency, where there is provision to specify future allocations of aid, in addition to all the other reporting mechanisms, the work of the Office for National Statistics and the external peer review by the OECD—I believe there is sufficient work within the programme on reporting, accountability and transparency to satisfy my noble friend.
My noble friend Lord Howell made a point about potential external factors and gave an interesting reason. The Minister responded very clearly with regard to that specific case. The Bill affords freedom for external impacts to be reported and then, through Parliament, to be scrutinised fully and for Parliament to determine the justification. On that basis, I respectfully ask my noble friend to withdraw his amendment.
4.45 pm