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Debate on the Address

My Lords, on behalf of the whole House, I warmly congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Patel of Bradford, on his excellent, thoughtful and illuminating speech. At the beginning of his remarks, he said that he did not intend to draw on his enormous expertise in ethnic health and social policy, to which I am sure all noble Lords know he has devoted so much distinguished time in his professional career. As we listened to him, however, we heard of the vital importance of understanding the role of ethnic health, community work and, in particular, community development in solving some of the problems of our own communities and how that can be so imaginatively translated into the developing world policy of which he spoke so enthusiastically. I again offer him my congratulations, and warmly welcome him. I also look forward to the other three maiden speeches that we will hear today. If the House will indulge me, I will say that I particularly look forward to the speech of—I think that I can call him this, in the relaxed tribalism of this House—my noble kinsman, Lord Jay of Ewelme, whom I had the pleasure of introducing to the House a few weeks ago. I follow the noble Lord, Lord Patel, on development, but perhaps take a slightly different and rather broader approach. I declare my usual interest as the chair of the Overseas Development Institute. As the House will recognise, development policy has been a high priority for the Government since this Parliament began. It has been the flagship success of our international policy in a period when, as we have already heard this afternoon, other aspects of our foreign relations have caused controversy and, to use the Minister’s own word, turbulence. Last year, 2005, optimistically became the year of overseas development. It was energetically led by the Prime Minister and supported by an extraordinary coalition of civil society. By those means, the UK Government succeeded in using our presidency of the G8 to build the important agreements to fight international poverty that were signed at the Gleneagles summit in July 2005. This year, 2006, has been about making those agreements stick. There have been some serious disappointments, notably in the failure so far of the Doha round of trade negotiations. On debt relief and the doubling of aid volumes, however, last year’s momentum has been largely maintained. At the same time, questions have grown about whether aid on its own is really effective in reducing poverty and whether any type of financial assistance is guaranteed to reach the most poor in the poorest countries. I therefore welcome the new emphasis that the Government are placing on the governance of development—in other words, on trying to devise policies and programmes specifically intended to improve the mechanics of delivery—and on improving national and international transparency and accountability in this area, which is equally important. In the last Session, the Government rightly gave a fair wind to the Private Member’s Bill taken through this House by my noble friend Lady Whitaker to improve parliamentary accountability and scrutiny of our aid programme. We shall see the first parliamentary report on that next year; it will cover not only financial targets but the management of development programmes and attempts to root out corruption in delivering them. It will also assess policy coherence in bilateral and multilateral projects, which is extremely important. In this area, I also welcome the White Paper that the Government published in July. Again, it emphasised multilateral action, but was called Eliminating World Poverty: Making Governance Work for the Poor. In his introduction, the Secretary of State, Hilary Benn, wrote: "““We need to help governments and citizens make politics work for the poor. And … push for change in the international system””." The White Paper proposes an extremely ambitious agenda for that reform: "““This means: reform of the UN; a more effective UN-led system to deal with humanitarian crises; more responsive international financial institutions; supporting the growing roles of regional organisations””." The White Paper is right to put reform at the United Nations at the top of the list. At the moment, there are too many examples of unco-ordinated UN efforts, which often make local situations seem worse rather than better. There are too many examples of different UN agencies tripping over one another on the ground in the developing world. The example that always catches my eye and is perhaps the most notorious is Vietnam, where the 11 UN agencies that are operating manage to deliver only 2 per cent of the aid that that country receives. Across the world as a whole, there are 28 UN agencies working on the problems of water supply. In health—another crucial area—there are more than 90 global funds, not all of which are directly run by the UN, but all of which are independent of one another. As the amount of aid grows—which we are pleased to see—receiving countries are compelled to set up vastly complicated accounting systems. Uganda and Mozambique each have more than 1,000 separate donor accounts. Ghana has 17 separate donors providing aid to its health sector and Egypt has 22. The World Health Organisation has more than 4,600 accounts that require regular accounting and systematic reports. I am not suggesting that those reports should not happen, and the UN is not the only culprit, but until now it has been part of the problem rather than the solution. In this respect, that organisation is not—to use the current vogue phrase—““fit for purpose””. The drive for reform has fortunately been given an important boost by the publication this month of the report by the United Nations High-level Panel on System-wide Coherence. That may be an uninspiring bureaucratic title, but the report has been greeted as the best opportunity for a generation to modernise the sprawling development apparatus. The high-level panel included three serving prime ministers, and the United Kingdom was represented by my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown. Therefore, the UK has an obvious opening to lead a determined charge to translate the report’s strong words into strong action, and I hope that the Government will seize that opportunity. The prize for achieving some UN coherence is worth fighting for because reformed development institutions could be the foundation for the modern and inclusive United Nations that was mentioned in the gracious Speech and which we would all like to see. It is only through this type of practical political reform that the world will make progress towards the genuine multilateralism and collective action that has already been a recurring theme in today’s debate. The Government have rightly tried to broaden the development debate beyond economic aid to produce an understanding that it should also include broader issues such as pandemic disease, regional conflict and climate change. It is absolutely right to emphasise such interdependence between all aspects of our overseas policy. Coherence is the only way to achieve genuine and long-term results. In conclusion, I congratulate the Government on their record in giving development the high-level prominence that it certainly deserves. I hope that in the coming year Ministers will continue to work at the very highest levels to achieve the reforms put forward in our White Paper and by the United Nations. I hope, too, that we can increase the general understanding of the inevitable links between global poverty and global security and approach both issues in a multilateral and collective way.