Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab) [V]

My Lords, the unpalatable truth is that the 25% cut in OECD support, together with the cut in European aid, is proving catastrophic for development and humanitarian assistance in the third world. The Labour Government, having inherited a legacy of economic problems, have had to take some very difficult and agonising decisions, and I am the first to recognise that. But the cuts in aid have been unsettling. The shifts from development budgets to defence and asylum support have been problematic. Over a lifetime, I have travelled worldwide, and I have seen real poverty. I first saw it as a third-world hitchhiker in my early 20s, later in business and during my work in the Commons, in the development brief. Cuts in aid, in conjunction with the disastrous effects of climate change, are provoking unparalleled movements of population from the third world to first-world countries. This movement is in its infancy; it is creating social pressures and division, racial intolerance and problems of integration, and is breeding extremism throughout Europe. Thankfully, enlightened policy in the United Kingdom, under all Governments, has to date helped to avoid the worst effects, but the rise of the far right across Europe is a direct consequence of population movements. Our mistake, across Europe, is to persist in the belief that cutting overseas assistance is unavoidable in conditions of financial restraint. I question this whole approach. The truth is that if we want to stem population flows, the developed world has to increase, not decrease its support for the third world.