Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)

My Lords, it is a particular pleasure to immediately follow my noble friend and to agree with his compelling arguments for UK-Africa relations. I also agree with his remarks regarding optimism. I am a Scottish liberal, and therefore when you have exhausted pessimism, there is only optimism left. I am very grateful to my noble friend Lady Featherstone for securing this debate and for the way in which she so clearly presented the case. I hope the House will forgive me for saying that we are very lucky on these Benches to have her among us, with the record and the commitment of delivery that she has brought. The House has also been very lucky to hear two outstanding maiden speeches today from the noble Baroness, Lady Hyde, and the noble Lord, Lord Barber, and we look forward to their future contributions. However, this afternoon was bittersweet because we learned that we will no longer hear contributions from the noble Lord, Lord Browne. He has been a friend across Benches to many people. He and I have joked in the conversations that we have grabbed when we have both been in the country, and I, like my noble friend Lord Oates, have learned a great deal from the noble Lord. He served Kilmarnock with great distinction in the House of Commons and served us as a public servant in this House very well. He will be greatly missed. When she introduced the debate, my noble friend gave a very clear argument for why development partnerships are in our interests both abroad and at home, especially in conflict prevention. That is why it simply makes no sense whatever to cut this work to the bone, as the Government are doing, when the need is greater, as my noble friend Lady Hussein-Ece said. A relationship becomes a partnership when it is trusted, predictable and reliable. But our partnerships have been systematically undermined in recent years by a whiplash of ministerial changes that mean that, in the last decade, the average lifespan of a UK Minister for Africa has not been longer than nine months. Devastatingly, there have been rushed changes such as abolishing DfID and slashing development expertise to the bone, often mid-contract and mid-programme, at a critical time when our partners know that their relationship with the UK is critical for them to get closer to meeting the global goals. We abandoned them by ending bilateral programmes—proven to work—in their entirety, often hobbling multilateral bodies on the way by cutting UK contributions. When the last Government and this Government chose to cut development to the lowest share of GNI in 50 years, they first felt it was necessary to misrepresent what it was. The last Government called it the greatest “cashpoint in the sky”, and this Government say that Britain is no longer a “charity”. It never was. It undermines the hard-working officials who have been development workers building partnerships over years to say that, at the end of the day, they were just charity workers. First you undermine it, then you can wring your hands when you say that the public do not support it, and you can cut it. Most perniciously, you frame the argument as a choice between development and defence. It is a false choice, but it is worse than that; it is a strategic error to say that there should be a choice in the first place. But even if there is the choice to do that, it simply ignores the law. We still have the 2002 Act when it comes to the objectives of development partnerships, and we have the 2015 Act on scale. Scale is important. In the excellent debate from the noble Lord, Lord Bates, earlier this month, the Minister for Development said that she did not believe that less investment leads to “less action, less impact and fewer development outcomes”.—[Official Report, 13/1/26; col. 1674.] But it is interesting that, in the Government’s Budget in March, the case for cutting development for those most in need in the world was that investment levels do not link with impact and better outcomes. Apparently, that is the only line of the Budget where that applies. Apparently, more investment is needed to meet the Government’s child poverty targets for Manchester but less is irrelevant when it comes to doing the same thing for Malawi. I hope the Minister can explain to us in clear terms that, after the UK pulled out of water and sanitary health programmes and cut WASH by 75%, we have determined that there has been no impact whatever, because no one is telling us that. In fact, we know that the impact of that has been disproportionate on women and girls. Can the Minister say that it has not been disproportionate for women and girls? When the Government have actively deprioritised education programmes, can the Minister repeat that this is having no impact? I ask this because we know the facts and we have all met those who have told us about the impacts. The UK was one of the few countries to have met the UN target of 0.7%. When we pulled out, often mid-programme and mid-contract, no one else had the sufficient scale to fill the gap. It has left many of our partners desperate to try to fill the gaps in other ways. The deep irony of the current negotiations in the US Congress between the House and the Senate is that the proposed budget, which may well come about, would restore US development programmes, which could lead to the prospect that the Labour Government have cut the budget the most of any OECD country. That surely cannot be right for this country. The Government are asking us now—perhaps the Minister will say it when he winds up—to reimagine development, but that is what we thought the review of the noble Baroness, Lady Shafik, was all about. It has never seen the light of day. Now, the Government are asking us to reimagine development to fit a cut budget, rather than thinking about what is needed and then setting a budget. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Forbes, that one of the virtues of soft power is that around the world we respect the rule of law. That is absolutely right. We have the law for 0.7% on our statute books here. Respecting the law on development would be a good start, before we start saying that other countries need to respect the rule of law. We have been told that we will return to the law when the fiscal circumstances allow. Now, the Development Minister has regarded the UN target as not valid. Hidden in the spending review—the previous Government’s and this Government’s—is the fine print saying that when the Government have got close to meeting the fiscal circumstances for the development rules, they have changed them. We are now on the fourth iteration of the fiscal rules for meeting the targets. Are the Government still operating to fiscal rules? If they are saying that the fiscal rules will not be met at the end of this Parliament, they are admitting that they will not be met for the budget as a whole. Parliament and the public know the impact that value for money in aid development has because we have an Independent Commission for Aid Impact. We do not have to listen to what a Minister might think: we are able to rely on an independent—I stress, independent—commission that reviews all elements of UK development partnerships and reports to Parliament and the public on their impact. Judging by what the Minister told the Development Committee last week, it seems that the Government are going to abolish it, DOGE style. Will the Minister make it clear in winding up that we will not abolish ICAI and that we will keep it as a vital resource for transparency? Finally, all the speakers today have said that the need is greater than ever and partnerships are more important than ever, but this Labour Government, who have never met a UN target, could be leaving a lower level of aid than it inherited—indeed, the lowest share ever reported in development statistics. When the need is greater than ever and partnerships are more important than ever, that is not the best record, if we are going to be seen as a soft-power nation around the world. Depressingly, the Official Opposition are now committed to reducing it even further. This is wrong for our moral compass around the world, wrong for our security, wrong for our safety, and wrong for our soft power and our relationships abroad. It is mostly wrong, however, for the people who are greatest in need, and we are letting them down.