My Lords, first I thank my noble friend most warmly for introducing this Bill. It is on an important subject and it is good that we are going to consider it in the House. It will need very careful attention in Committee. Perhaps I may also say that having known my noble friend for many years, his faith and commitment to our aid and development responsibilities are very real and he has evidenced them consistently.
What the noble Baroness has just said about the danger of slippage must be in the mind of anyone who has held ministerial responsibility. Slippage can begin to accumulate like a snowball. This is a difficult issue that I have never totally resolved intellectually. Having been a defence Minister and a development Minister, I do not think it is altogether satisfactory to have a defence policy or an aid policy that relies heavily on its percentage of the GNP. What you must have is an effective defence policy and an effective development policy. It is the quality and quantity of what is being done that is really important, and that ultimately is how an aid programme will be judged.
But the world is not quite like that. Why I supported without qualification all the energy that went into ensuring that the 0.7% commitment is enshrined in
our legislation is because I know, from having held ministerial office in that area, that what the noble Baroness has just said is terribly important: the pressures coming from all sorts of different quarters might mean that in the end, while you might have an impressive aid programme to address the challenges of world poverty, suffering and injustice that gives you a lovely shining halo because you have a perfect project, it would not realistically add up to much of a contribution to world justice, peace and stability. From that standpoint, therefore, the target is important.
On annual or five-yearly reporting, there are issues that would need to be examined. A general election would almost certainly ensue within a five-year period, so would the outgoing Government really be held to account in the general election as fully as they should be? The other issue is how to ensure that results are being produced, and therefore some discipline about annual performance is important. However, there is a complication. I have no hesitation in saying, having been a development Minister, that I was subsequently director of Oxfam. During my time with Oxfam I learned an important lesson: the pressure to produce tangible results within short timescales can actually be distorting in terms of genuine and lasting development. Long-term development extends over a number of years, and there is an argument that in some situations you can judge what has been contributed only many years later, when you can see what has happened in that society. It may not always be exactly what you had hoped for, predicted would happen or stated as your objective, but it might be very interesting. Development is about not just producing results, but contributing to a process that belongs to the people of the country concerned and the communities with which you are working. It is about what they can gain in self-confidence, skills and abilities, and building them up over a lasting and sustained period. A lot of details will need to be looked at in Committee.
I hope I will not be accused of being sentimental—this House is very harsh on sentimentality, and rightly so— but I have a mind jammed full of vivid, real anecdotes I have encountered at first hand that have regenerated my commitment to this very important issue. I will share with the House just one. It was during that awful, bitter, cruel civil war in Mozambique. I could get to my destination only by hitching a lift on a relief plane. My heart was in my mouth during that flight. A merrier band of cowboys flying a plane I had never encountered. Furthermore, the state of the plane needed some attention, but it was carrying relief supplies and it got there.
What struck me when we arrived—I am sure many of us saw the situation on television and elsewhere—was this quiet murmuring from the huge crowd that had assembled. There were thousands of people. Some had lost absolutely everything. I was introduced to a family who, just a few days ago, had watched their village and home burn to the ground, and their seven year-old child be chopped to death and burned in the house. Here were these people. I was glad that I could come home and say to Oxfam supporters, the wider public and my colleagues, “It is worth it. We aren’t getting it all through because it’s a war situation”—one
must be realistic; not all does get through—“but a very substantial amount is getting through and it makes the operation worth while”.
But that was not the main message that came home to me. This is the point at which the House may feel I am testing credibility, but it is true. What I experienced then had a great deal to do with my decision, when asked, to join this House, which is an experience I have always valued. Yes, the blankets, the soap, the salt, the food was getting through, but within days of those people getting into that camp, they were asking for spades, for shovels, to start growing their own food again. I thought of my home community in Oxford and of my own family. If we had been through a fraction of this experience, we would be totally broken. Yet here were these people, already physically and committedly rebuilding their lives.
I came home saying that I really had to do something about getting this message across. It is not these people’s privilege to be helped by us. That is a moral responsibility that we cannot escape. It is our privilege to work with people of so much dignity, courage and drive. Therefore, I hope that in the deliberations on the Bill, as in every debate we have on this subject, we remember that we are not generous, wealthy people saying, “We must give some of our wealth to the poor”. There may be people who say that, but that does not switch me on. Rather, we should say, “How exciting, how challenging to have the opportunity to work with people in these desperate conditions, in desperate plight, to build a more secure, just future”. Have no fear: we will not have a secure, peaceful world unless there is effectively growing social justice in the world.
10.35 am