Lord Fowler (CB)

My Lords, I will raise two brief but important points. I accept entirely that we should make savings to pay for the resources we are giving to defence, and I entirely support the strongest possible support for Ukraine. However, I do not understand why all the savings are concentrated on overseas aid. Out of the whole government budget, why are we concentrating just on overseas aid? Given all the things that we have said on the importance of overseas aid —on both sides of the House; I can see noble Lords here who have spoken on this—it does not seem to be in proportion. We are in danger of affecting the poorest people in some of the poorest nations in the world, very much to their detriment. Britain has—or had—a very high reputation in this area. My concern is: will this new concentration on cutting overseas aid alone not take away from that reputation? Above all, will it not encourage other nations, which have so far not been very happy on overseas aid, health aid or anything of that sort, to follow suit? That is the question that I think the noble Baroness needs to answer.