My Lords, I declare an interest: I was Minister for Overseas Development, before moving on to the Foreign Office. I have served both professionally
and voluntarily in the development sphere in various non-governmental organisations, including as director of VSO and subsequently Oxfam. To all of us involved in that work, the importance of the Bill, which I very much endorse, and of the amendment that has just been spoken to, cannot be overemphasised. Indeed, I noticed the other day that the Prime Minister, in saying in the Conservatives’ election campaign that they will stand by their commitment on overseas aid, emphasised that what was important was to make sure that the aid was being spent in the most effective way and not wasted.
It is terribly important to recognise that the people of too many developing countries are being robbed by their leaders, and that existing arrangements enable those leaders to get away with it. If we are going to talk about the effective use of aid, it seems to me that where we have the authority to take highly relevant and effective steps, we should do so. Yes, of course, we must put on record that Britain has taken great steps to provide world leadership in this sphere. It is leading the world already. That is why the remaining gaps are very ugly anomalies. I do not like to put it in these crude terms but it always seems to me that people either have some reason for not implementing immediately what is proposed or they do not, and if they do not, let us do it. If they are going to find ways of delaying—having still to work out arrangements and so on—this must raise suspicions that arrangements are going to be made in other respects as well.
From that standpoint, I say simply that, with all my experience in this sphere, this is a crucial matter. I congratulate the noble Baroness and her co-signatories on having stood by their guns. I hope the amendment will be taken seriously because I believe there could be a very important consensus in this House if we are prepared to put ourselves on record.