Speaking in the Estimates Day debate, Andrew Mitchell calls for a meaningful vote on the 0.7% overseas development which will result in severe cuts to the UK’s work on education for girls, on neglected tropical diseases and funding for the British Council, the Voluntary Service Overseas and the International Citizen Service.
Mr Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)
I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee and, indeed, the International Development Committee, which is so ably led by the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion). It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali), who shadowed me for a period of time when I had responsibility for some of these matters. I want to underline what has already been said about our respect for and gratitude to humanitarian workers and others around the world who put themselves in harm’s way for their fellow members of humanity and also, of course, to our brilliant diplomats, who are the subject of these estimates debates.
The Prime Minister, when responding to me last week, mentioned the possibility of a vote on these estimates. Languidly, that ball was tossed to him by the Leader of the House, but it is worth making clear, not least for those outside this place, that there was never any question of having a vote on the estimates. The Leader of the House was merely teasing the House by suggesting that, because he knows perfectly well that it is neither sensible nor serious to vote in that way. I believe he sleeps with “Erskine May” on his nightstand, and he knows that very well. The estimates have never been rejected by this place. They can either be reduced or rejected, but they cannot be increased. Of course, many of us want to see them increased so that we honour our commitment to 0.7%. If we had accepted my right hon. Friend’s invitation on the estimates, and if we had rejected them, the Foreign Office would have needed to send out redundancy notices on Monday in order to meet its legal obligations, like Liverpool in the days of Derek Hatton and the loony left. And they think that we who stand up for the 0.7% are the irresponsible Members of this House!
Let us be absolutely clear on the estimates. To oppose them would have given my right hon. Friend the Chief Whip all his Christmases in one go. No responsible Opposition would support such a thing. What we seek from this Government, who are rebelling against their own promises and manifesto, is a meaningful vote, not a show of force or something that the Government can ignore, and we do this in accordance with Mr Speaker’s specific instructions to the Government at 3.30 on 14 June, just a couple of weeks ago.
Why do we care so much about this issue? I would like to make just three points, because the House has probably heard enough from me on much of it. These cuts are hurting our reputation and threatening our foreign policy ambitions. My right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), who spoke so eloquently today, made the 0.7% her first commitment in the 2017 election, because she understood the importance of standing by the 0.7% in reinforcing our values and our promises. Much worse, these unprecedented cuts in the heart of a pandemic are damaging hundreds of thousands of people’s lives and leading to many avoidable deaths.
There are three examples that I want to mention quickly. The first is education for girls, which the Prime Minister has spoken about so eloquently, and on which British policy has been driven passionately and effectively by my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin). However, we are cutting that investment by 40%, meaning that 700,000 fewer girls will get into education, and we are also cutting by 60% our grant to UNICEF, the agency that is the very engine of getting girls into school. In 2010, the British Government doubled their UNICEF grant. A third of all girls in secondary schools in Africa drop out because they become pregnant, yet we are cutting by 85% our funding of the work of the United Nations family planning agency across the world. That is not, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead indicated, joined-up government.
Anna McMorrin
Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that it is often women and girls across the world who face the brunt of climate change in their own communities, and that the cutting back of aid within those countries and communities is not only having a devastating effect over there but, given the interconnected nature of climate change, is impacting on us here? In the year of COP, five months away from it, surely we should expect better from this Government.
Mr Mitchell
The hon. Lady makes an extremely good point. We cannot understand international development unless we see it through the eyes of girls and women.
My second point, which has already been mentioned, is on the 90% cut in funding for work on neglected tropical diseases. That funding is a huge British taxpayer investment. It is also one of the best investments we can make in global health. The Prime Minister, in a superb video earlier this year, promised strongly to support that work, yet it has now been cut by 90%. That means that 74 million schoolchildren will not receive drugs to prevent parasitic worms. It means that huge numbers will be maimed, blinded, debilitated, disabled and killed. The UK was a world leader in this extraordinarily important area, stimulating public and private sector partnerships. As a result of this cut, hundreds of millions of drugs, vaccines and tablets will be wasted and probably burned.
My third point has been very well made by my hon. Friends the Members for Somerton and Frome (David Warburton) and for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron). It is about the work of the British Council, the Voluntary Service Overseas and the International Citizen Service, which I had the privilege of setting up some 10 years ago. There is no clarity about the future funding of the International Citizen Service, which has sent thousands and thousands of youngsters overseas, many of them not from well-off families but from families that were on free school meals. They have been brilliant ambassadors for our country as well as doing such a good job in international development. The British Council, which I know my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay is going to talk about, is now far more self-sufficient in raising its own money and giving the taxpayer a better deal than ever before, and to let it down in this way is really quite wrong. Is it any wonder that my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead rather movingly made the 0.7% her first pledge in 2017 general election?
I want to draw the House’s attention to the words of the deputy Foreign Secretary—the Minister for the Middle East and North Africa, my right hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (James Cleverly)—who, as little time ago as 9 July last year, said this from the Dispatch Box:
“The Government remain completely committed to the 0.7% of GNI to ODA. That has been called into question a number of times, so I will repeat myself, despite the fact that my time is short: the Government are completely committed to the 0.7% target…That commitment is embedded in law, but we do not spend 0.7% because it is embedded in law—we spend 0.7% because it is the right thing to do.”—[Official Report, 9 July 2020; Vol. 678, c. 1198-1200.]
I end on two points. First, when are the Government going to abide by Mr Speaker’s instruction to the House at 3.30 pm on 14 June to bring forward a meaningful vote? Secondly, post-Brexit, with the emphasis on returning powers to this Parliament, we stand here today on an issue where we all promised—all 650 of us—to stand by the 0.7%. It is an issue on which the Government gave undertakings on the floor of the United Nations General Assembly; that is enshrined in law, with the most senior lawyers in the country warning that the Government have changed the 0.7% and not missed the target; and on which the Government have avoided a vote on the Floor of this House because they know they will lose it. If that is the case, what is the point of the good people of the royal town of Sutton Coldfield sending me here? What has become of the pride we all feel in being Members of this place? If we cannot secure a vote on an issue of life and death, do we not need to look afresh at the balance of power between the Executive—the Government—and the legislature of this House of Commons, in order that we do have powers to vote on something that is so important and to which so many of us have been, for years, so committed?
Earlier intervention in the same debate
Mr Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend realise that the position is far worse than was set out when the so-called merger took place? What has happened is that DFID has been completely dismantled. Even in the days of her predecessor, Lady Thatcher, there was an overseas development administration within the Foreign Office, which was a sort-of department for development with a Minister of State in charge of it. There is nothing like that today. The whole thing has been completely smashed to pieces, as she is saying in her speech.
Mrs Theresa May (Maidenhead) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend for clarifying that point so well. If we are going to continue to be respected as a country that leads on overseas aid, it is absolutely imperative that we not only spend the money, but that we also have the expertise to ensure that it is being spent properly. Hosting receptions in the British embassy, and getting to know local businessmen and politicians, is a different skillset to knowing how to deliver aid on the ground logistically, so that British taxpayers’ money is spent in the most effective way.