Sir Andrew Mitchell
MP for Sutton Coldfield · Conservative · United Kingdom
“I urge Labour Members to rise up now and say that the historical interest and support of the Labour party have been for international development. People might expect the beastly Tories to cut aid and development, but they do not expect the Labour party to do that. Now is a chance to have a real reset, which should include three things.”
“As we get older, we tend to look back at the past through rose-tinted spectacles, but I acknowledge at the outset that British development policy is at its best by far when it is conducted on an all-party basis. It is not a Labour, Conservative or Liberal policy; it is a British policy. That was one of its great glories in the past.”
“Friend the Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale about the importance of saving the Independent Commission for Aid Impact, but we have to accept that we will not get a major boost in public support unless it comes from the top. We had an era of huge support, led by Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Theresa May.”
“The Government are the 100% shareholder in BII and are therefore able to set out very clearly what its priorities should be, but they should then leave an organisation like BII to get on with following that mandate. I argue that there have been three great losses from the Johnson and Starmer premierships.”
“I argue that, since the Suez crisis, international development has been the only area of indisputable British international leadership—and we have lost that.”
“I do not really agree with that because, while the hon. Gentleman cites a number of areas where Britain makes a big contribution, there is a big black hole where we have cut off our legs in respect to international development. I will say a word or two about that in a moment.”
The complete record
Every one of 4,936 lines we hold for Sir Andrew Mitchell, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 50 of 99.
“By making the countries we seek to help safer and more prosperous, we make life for ourselves here in Britain safer and more prosperous.”
“I can assure the House that, were it not for the covid restrictions, the same people who made the human chain around the Birmingham G8 summit and the quarter of a million people who marched on Edinburgh before the Gleneagles G8 would be preparing today to descend on Cornwall to make their views known at this G7 and to protest this unethical and unlawful betrayal. They would be joined by a whole new generation of young people who are watching this Government break our promise to the world’s poorest. They do not like what they see. This weekend, they may not be on the streets, but they will be watching, and they will remember. For two decades, the UK has been a development leader, not just because that is morally right and accords with our values, but because it is in our own national interest.”
“Each and every one of us is accountable to those constituents, who are taking action in their local schools, colleges, churches, mosques, charity shops, women’s institute branches, congregations and community groups. Twelve million people—an average of 15,000 per parliamentary constituency—are supporters of the member organisations of that coalition, and they must be heard. The people who sponsor children through development organisations, the members of churches that are twinned with others in the developing world, the people who were there for Jubilee 2000 and for Make Poverty History—they do not forget when we break our promises to them; they organise.”
“The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Of course, what he says has been reinforced by every single member of his party who serves in the House, and it is the point that my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough, a former Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, was making: if we turn this expenditure on and off in this way, the taxpayer does not get proper value for money. Nor is this about party politics. All 650 of us elected to this House at the last election promised to stand by the 0.7%. The Bill enshrining the 0.7% in law was passed unwhipped in this House, with just six dissenters. Outside the House, in every single constituency in the country, there are people taking action as part of Crack the Crises, the growing environment and development group.”
“Other G7 countries are noticing what the Government are doing. Is it any wonder that, in a letter to President Biden, a dozen Members of Congress have urged him to upbraid Britain for breaking its promise? One sentence in their letter made me wince. It reads as follows: “Cutting back on foreign assistance during the worst humanitarian crisis of our generation only undermines our collective global response.” This is what the journalist who used to serve in this House and who probably understands the Conservative party best said at the weekend: “Try though seasick government whips will to mount one, there is no civilised defence of this cut. This cut looks like what it is: a cheap and brutal gesture, a piece of domestic applause-seeking”.”
“In the words of Talleyrand, the French statesman, this is worse than a crime; it is a mistake. What my right hon. and hon. Friends and I—the so-called rebels—are trying to do is to keep the Government straight. And so we come to this week’s G7 summit, when the leaders of the richest nations will assemble in Cornwall. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister will be chairing the summit, and he goes into it in the teeth of a global pandemic, when Britain is cutting its support to the poorest. No other country represented at the G7 is doing such a thing. The French have now embraced the 0.7%. The Germans will spend more than 0.7% this year. The Americans—by far the biggest funders in the world—are seeking an increase through Congress of $14 billion in the amount that is spent. We are the only ones going backwards.”
“Everyone knows what this is about. It is not about the 1% rounding error in the Treasury’s books. It is about the red wall seats. The Government think that it is popular in the red wall seats to stop British aid money going overseas. Indeed, one Treasury Minister told me that 81% of people in the red wall seats do not approve of spending British taxpayers’ money overseas. But we have to be careful about the question we ask, because other polling in the red wall seats shows that 92% of people there do not approve of cutting humanitarian aid. It is also a very patronising attitude to people who live in the red wall seats, because when these dreadful famines, disasters and floods take place, it is the people in the red wall seats who are the first to raise money through car boot sales and pub quizzes to try to help those who are caught.”
“We are talking about 1% of the money that the Treasury quite rightly spent on covid last year to sustain and support jobs, families and employment. This is 1%—it is practically a rounding error in my right hon. Friend’s books. We offered an olive branch to the Government last night, which the Government could have accepted, and then we could all have cracked on with other things, by asking them to bring the 0.7% back next year. We accept that they are not going to bring it back this year, but we asked them to bring it back next year, when the Governor of the Bank of England says that the economy will have rebounded to pre-covid levels and growth will be strong. If the Government were serious about bringing it back when the economy improved, they would have accepted the olive branch that my right hon. and hon. Friends and I offered.”
“On the point about the level of expenditure and the £10 billion, it is rather like buying a car and shaking hands on a deal at 15 grand, only to do a runner while the poor fellow is counting the cash after you have legged it, having handed over only 10 grand. It is not proper, it is fundamentally un-British and we should not behave in this way. It is about the girl whose school closed in South Sudan last week after the headteacher read the letter from the Foreign Office explaining that it is only temporary. The second argument is that we live in unprecedented economic times and that the Government will bring the 0.7% back, but the 0.7% is configured precisely to take account of our economy. When the economy contracts and goes down, so does the amount of money spent under the 0.7%, and when it increases, that amount goes back up.”
“All of us made that promise—I have seen every single Member’s manifesto at the last election, and every single elected Member made that promise. It is arguable, at the least, that the action the Government are taking is unlawful. One of the most senior and distinguished lawyers in the country, the warden of Wadham, Oxford, a former Director of Public Prosecutions, has made it clear that the Government are acting unlawfully because they have changed, rather than missed, the target. I argue to the House this afternoon that what the Government are doing is unethical, possibly illegal and certainly breaks our promise.”
“The Government need to remember that the Government and the Executive are accountable to Parliament, not the other way round, and most especially on issues of supply, as the Minister—he is a very good Minister—knows. That applies in all circumstances, whether the Executive are being run by King Charles I or Boris Johnson. The Government make two key arguments: first, that they are still spending a huge amount of money—I am sure that is what my right hon. Friend the Minister will say this afternoon—and, secondly, that we are living in unprecedented times for our economy and they will bring the 0.7% back. Let me start with the first—that we are still spending a huge amount of money. Of course, that is entirely correct, but we all promised to spend 0.7% of our GNI, not to change the target and spend 0.5%.”
“I very much hope that my hon. Friend will stay for the whole debate so that he hears the views across the House. I am sure that will be both instructive and interesting for him. Mr Speaker, the way the Government are behaving strikes at the heart of our Parliament, as you set out from the Chair yesterday. We cannot secure a meaningful vote. Had we been able to do so yesterday, as I intimated to the House, we would definitely have won by nine, and probably by nearer 20. It is precisely because the Government fear that they would lose that they are not calling a vote. That is not democracy. When countries behave like that in Africa, we British say that they have got it wrong.”
“However, if we miss that point, they have to go to a clinic, have a drip up and it costs about $180 to put them right.”
“These are not people who have missed eating for a few days; they are people who are starving, and we are going to cut our support for them directly. I have never forgotten the experience I had as Development Secretary in Karamoja, in northern Uganda, where I stood under a tree next to a football pitch, which was covered by children who were starving. There were about 200 children there and they were waiting in line. They were suffering from acute malnutrition, and British taxpayers’ money and British humanitarian workers were trying to help them. If we catch them early enough, when they are floppy but not actually medically critical, we give them Plumpy’Nut, a biscuity peanut substance that costs about a 5p a head, and they will be recovered in about an hour and probably running around playing football.”
“So on the one hand we have the words—the aspiration—and on the other we have the reality of the 25% cut. Worse than that, UNICEF, which has a fantastic reputation and which the British Government judged just a few years ago to be the most effective of all the UN agencies, has had a cut of 60%. On clean water and sanitation, which is pivotal if we are to conquer this pandemic among the poorest of the world, some 10 million people who were expecting to receive British taxpayers’ support will not now get it. Funding to the UN to save the lives of people suffering with HIV/AIDS has been cut by 80%, which is a death sentence for the people who would have been helped. Finally, we are going to end food assistance for 250,000 people.”
“The right hon. Gentleman makes a good and useful point, and the decisions made on the SDRs will be extremely helpful. We come, finally, to the essence of all of this. Because of the way the development budget is configured, these terrible cuts are falling first and hardest on the humanitarian sectors. Let me just mention four of them. The first is girls’ education. The Prime Minister has rightly said that it is his main aspiration on these international development issues—this is strongly supported by my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin)—to ensure that all girls get 12 years of quality education. That is a wonderful and noble British initiative, but what has happened to the funding? It has been cut by 25%.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right and he puts it enormously eloquently. I end my remarks by saying that that story from Karamoja in northern Uganda has lived with me from the day I saw those things. I will be thinking of those children in this debate and I urge my right hon. and hon. Friends to think about them as well.”
“The Treasury really must do better than that, because 1p on income tax is worth nearly £6 billion, so the increase would be much less than 1p.”
“I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way. Obviously, she and I do not fully agree on this. Would she like to speculate on why Britain alone of the wealthy nations is cutting its aid when everyone else is either maintaining it or increasing it? Why is our economy so bad that we have to balance the books on the backs of the poorest people in the world, unlike all the other rich countries?”
“My hon. Friend is making an extremely good and sensible speech. May I thank him for the immense amount of hard work and leadership he has undertaken in advancing this argument and getting it to this point today?”
“My hon. Friend mentions China, and that is a very good point because we should not be spending any aid in China. It was cancelled on my first day in office 10 years ago, unless it was legally required, and I am afraid that, in my view, the aid is being spent wrongly by the Foreign Office.”
“Friends who have joined me today would not be seen dead at a left-wing dinner party, let alone one in north London. I am extremely grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for chairing the debate and giving the House the chance to consider these matters, influence the thinking of the Treasury and its Chief Secretary, and try to ensure that we get this right.”
“We know that the cuts will lead inevitably to hundreds of thousands of avoidable deaths, and we are worried about the trashing of our international reputation. These concerns are shared across the House, by the Government’s friends, as well as by the people who are not warm towards this Government. I urge the Chief Secretary to consider what he has heard this afternoon and to reflect upon it in the discussions that he is having in the Treasury. I note that my colleagues and I were referred to in a normally very wise national newspaper as the sort of people who, “Attend left-wing dinner parties in north London.” I confess that when I am London and not in my constituency of the royal town of Sutton Coldfield, I do live in Islington, but I should make it clear that most of my hon.”
“Madam Deputy Speaker, I thank you and Mr Speaker for granting this Standing Order No. 24 debate today. I urge the Minister here today, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, to hear the voice of the House. He is a decent and understanding fellow, and I hope he will reflect on what he has heard this afternoon. I believe that only four of the very many people who have spoken supported the Government’s cuts, and I very much hope he will reflect on the innate decency of the British people in what he has heard from Members from all parts of the House this afternoon. The House is not with the Government on this and they should hear that. They should also hear the voices of their loyal Friends on these Benches; we want the Government to get it right. We are genuinely hugely concerned.”
“In the week of the British chairmanship of the G7, the Government’s failure to address this issue will indisputably mean that hundreds of thousands of avoidable deaths will result. It is already attracting criticism from all round the other members of the G7. What advice do you have, Mr Speaker, for my right hon. and hon. Friends and I to seek to stop the Government riding roughshod over Parliament in this way and seeking to thwart our democratic rights as Members of the House of Commons?”
“On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Further to your statement, of course I completely accept that you are the referee on these matters, and that is that, but the Government Front Bench are treating the House of Commons with disrespect. They are avoiding a vote on the commitments that each of us made, individually and collectively, at the last general election on a promise made internationally, and in the opinion of some of Britain’s leading lawyers, the Government are acting unlawfully. Had we secured a vote on the new clause tonight, I can assure the House that it would have secured the assent of the House by not less than a majority of nine, and probably of around 20 votes.”
“It will cut global health security in a pandemic by more than 14%, it will cut funding on HIV/AIDS by 80%, and it will cut the Prime Minister’s flagship policy on girls’ education by 25%. None of that should go ahead without the matter being considered by the House. I very much hope, Mr Deputy Speaker, that you will consider granting my application under Standing Order No. 24 because of the seriousness of the issues involved.”
“I remind the House that paid-up members of environment non-governmental organisations and charities, and of development NGOs and charities, average out at 10,000 per constituency; there are not 10,000 in every constituency, of course, but there are very many of them. It is the view of lawyers including Lord Ken Macdonald, the warden of Wadham College, that the measures taken by the Government are unlawful. A promise was made at the United Nations before the G7 about what Britain would do, and we have heard what the senior official Mark Lowcock has said about the Government’s failure to stand by their promise. That is a promise that every Member of this House—all 650 of us—made at the last general election. This is a humanitarian aid cut.”
“We now face a situation in which Parliament has not had its say on this vital matter. That is not right. Had the new clause been selected, it would have passed the House by at least nine votes, and probably around 20; I have some experience of these matters, and I assure the House that that is correct. The problem for the Government is that the House of Commons maths is not going to go away. We have seen over recent days a massive outpouring from civil society about the damage that is being done by these cuts. An organisation called Crack the Crises, which would have had far more attention had it not been for covid, is following in the footsteps of Make Poverty History and will have an immense effect on opinion in our constituencies.”
“I seek leave to propose that the House should debate a specific and important matter that should have urgent consideration, namely the matter of the 0.7% official development assistance target. I seek this emergency debate today because, for reasons that Mr Speaker has clearly set out, the much anticipated debate over a technical amendment—new clause 4—to restore the 0.7% target through the Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill will not now go ahead. I make it clear to my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Front Bench that I very strongly support the Bill; indeed, the House will have noticed that the effect of the new clause, had it been selected, would have been to stuff the Bill with an enormous amount of 0.7% money, which of course it could have spent.”
“Surely it cannot be in anyone’s interests, least of all those who are mourning loved ones, for the mob to descend and judge and preoccupy my right hon. Friend at this point in the pandemic. The Government have made clear that there will be a full public inquiry, and that is when hindsight can and should prevail. Now, surely, it is in all our interests that he gets on with his work, bringing his experience to bear on saving lives and carrying out this excellent vaccination programme. Will he meet a cross-party delegation of West Midlands metropolitan leaders who are keen to work with him to deliver those common objectives?”
“The whole House will welcome the tone and content of what the Prime Minister has said today, and in particular his proper commitment to the transparency of the inquiry and learning everything we can from the past. There are 3,500 people across my constituency who are involved in the hospitality sector, and many businesses have invested their own money in making covid adaptations to ensure the safety of their customers when they return. Given the very sensible road map that Prime Minister he has outlined, will he emphasise the increasing role of personal judgment and common sense, rather than Government fiat, as greater normality returns, and with it our hugely valued and much cherished civil liberties?”
“My right hon. Friend has just given us the excellent news that the economy should have rebounded by the end of this year. He and I have discussed on a number of occasions the importance of international development. In view of that, can he confirm to the House today that he will restore the 0.7% target at the end of the year when the economy has so recovered?”
“Funding for UNICEF, which looks after children and was assessed in the British Government’s multilateral aid review to be the best UN agency, has been cut back by 60%. These are very serious issues.”
“Areas such as mine have to go through Birmingham City Council and there are inevitably political difficulties and differences of emphasis. I urge the Treasury to consider that. Secondly, on the 0.7% aid target, I very much hope that the Chancellor will have heard yesterday the words of the former Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May); the Father of the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley); and others in the House. The Gracious Speech quite rightly calls for girls’ education, which is probably the most effective way of changing the world, but on girls’ education—the Prime Minister’s particular priority—we have seen a 25% cut, with funding set to fall from £789 million in 2019 to a projected £400 million this year. That is a very substantial cut.”
“This is the first young generation since world war one that does not believe it will be better off than its parents’ generation. That is an important issue. The devolution of power—which is, of course, part of the answer to the constitutional questions about Scotland, Ireland and the United Kingdom—is very important and it works well in the West Midlands. I strongly encourage the Chancellor to give Andy Street every possible support in the work that he is doing. In particular, in the royal town of Sutton Coldfield we would like levelling-up funds. I hope very much that we will be in the second tranche, because public spending is critical to securing successful development, sometimes in places that are ostensibly quite well off but need that spending if they are to succeed.”
“I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne). We do not agree on everything and I have spent the past two years working hard for his opponent, Andy Street, who was elected last Thursday, but I thank him for what he said and for what was a decent and fair campaign in the West Midlands that dignified democracy and did all the main candidates considerable credit. First, I am a fan of the mayoral system and think that Andy Street will be best placed to secure the right economic judgments and the jobs, training and levelling up. As has been said already in this debate, levelling up is not just geographical but generational.”
“Significant advances are being made in southern Ireland, Scotland, New Zealand, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Germany and Australia, so I ask that we as parliamentarians consider allowing our constituents who are terminally sick and within six months of dying to be able to exercise their own choices, and not be forced to endure a level of pain and indignity that they do not wish to suffer.”
“Friend the Member for South West Surrey (Jeremy Hunt) and his experienced Select Committee, who might have a role in assisting the Government in refining those plans and aspirations. The final point that I want to make is about assisted dying. I am the co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on choice at the end of life, and I know that there are very strong feelings in the House on this issue. I greatly respect those who completely disagree with me on the matter, not least since I have completely changed my own mind since I first entered the House many years ago. Those of us who are supporting Dignity in Dying want a very tight and narrow change made to the law. We believe that this could be the great liberal reform of this Parliament; 84% of our constituents want to see this sort of reform introduced.”
“I am obviously disappointed that the Government have not yet set out quite how they wish to proceed on this matter, but it seems to me that this is a major and important reform that needs to be agreed by all parties. Like pensions legislation, it has a long tail. However, much of the work has already been done by Sir Andrew Dilnot. I hope that the Government will look carefully at those plans and decide whether they are able perhaps to tweak them, but to implement them. In my constituency, we have big plans for the Royal Sutton Coldfield Cottage Hospital, but those plans require us to understand what the national social care priorities will be. I hope that this legislation will come forward, possibly with the assistance of my right hon.”
“On the cut that he has made to 0.5%, we are talking of 1% of that £400 billion, but the damage that this is doing to Britain’s reputation, quite apart from the damage it is doing to the poorest people in the world, is very savage indeed. I therefore urge the Chancellor to announce as soon as he can that we will stand by our promise that we made just a year ago in the general election and by the promise that the British Government made on the floor of the General Assembly at the UN, and that we will no longer seek to balance the books on the backs of the poorest people in the world. The third point that I wanted to make was mentioned in the Gracious Speech, and it is about social care.”
“The right hon. Gentleman knows very well my strong support for the 0.7%. The point that I am making is that the damage being done to Britain’s reputation, quite apart from the damage to the poorest people in the world, is very severe indeed. I worry that the Treasury does not fully appreciate these factors. The Chancellor generously gave way to me earlier and I asked him whether he would consider reinstating the 0.7% once the economy reaches pre-covid levels. He said that the damage that was done might be too great for that. I hope very much that he will think about those words. He also mentioned that we have given £400 billion of taxpayers’ support—quite rightly and highly effectively, thanks to his successful stewardship—to our efforts to combat covid.”
“My hon. Friend is a very good Minister and the Government have, of course, inherited this problem, but, as a House, we have to recognise that this is a grotesque breach of the human rights and civil liberties of up to 555 litigants—our fellow citizens. It is right up there with the acts that we quite rightly complain about in some foreign countries. There may well be inadequate Post Office management, but a Government permanent secretary is the accounting officer and the Government urgently need to do the right thing. In respect of the inquiry that is already commissioned, will the Minister ensure that the evidence, advice and words of Lord Arbuthnot from the other place, who has consistently championed this issue and has been proven right, are loudly heard?”
“(Urgent Question) : To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs if he will make a statement on reductions in the overseas development assistance budget.”
“Is it not clear that the original estimate of 100,000 souls who will die as a result is now a tragic understatement? This dreadful political—not economic—decision shames our country and our Government. It should shame us all.”
“Why are the Government derailing our Prime Minister’s pledge on girls’ education with cuts that will result in 4 million fewer girls going to school while Britain is simultaneously hosting an international replenishment conference asking others to fund this key British objective? The 0.7% is not just a commitment to the world’s poorest enshrined in law by this House; it is a reflection of the kind of country we aspire to be and the values that we uphold. Ninety-five per cent. of red wall voters approve of life-saving humanitarian aid, but that is exactly what the Treasury is cutting in their name. We are cutting £500 million in humanitarian aid. This will mean that 3 million women and children will not now receive life-saving support.”
“When Germany will now exceed the 0.7% target, France is now pledged to hit it and the US is increasing aid spending by $15 billion, why is Britain, chair of the G7, breaking its promises to the poorest and the election manifesto commitment on which we were all elected, and which this country previously has so proudly upheld? Do the Government understand that the aid cut to Syria undermines our key ally in the middle east, Jordan, and will increase the flow of refugees into Europe? Do the Government realise that sending 300 troops to Mali while cutting humanitarian aid to the Sahel is a failure of understanding that puts our troops at greater risk?”
“When my right hon. Friend visited the west midlands earlier this week to meet our brilliant Mayor, Andy Street, was he aware that the Mayor has increased sevenfold the investment in transport, and we now have 108 shiny new carriages for the cross-city line? What advice does he have for my constituents in the royal town of Sutton Coldfield on 6 May?”
“Are the Government not a little concerned that when they are chairing the G7 in a global pandemic, when international development has never been more important, the Germans have hit the 0.7%, the French have embraced the 0.7%, and the Americans have increased their international development spending by no less than $15 billion, whereas we in Britain are breaking our promise to the poorest, breaking our manifesto commitment on which we were all elected just over a year ago, and cutting humanitarian aid, leading directly to hundreds of thousands of avoidable deaths, particularly among women and children?”
“My hon. Friend speaks with great experience and knows of what he talks, but I am still struggling to understand precisely what the NATO strategy or plan is here. In addition to the great bravery and sacrifices of our own military, some very brave Afghan leaders, including women, believed that NATO would stay the course and will now feel very let down while the Taliban have little need to negotiate but increasingly will be in a very strong position. Does this not underline the very real limits of hard power and the importance of using soft power judiciously?”