Sir Desmond Swayne
MP for New Forest West · Conservative · United Kingdom
“Just how confident is the Minister that this was not a cyber-attack? How confident is he of the resilience of the system in the event of such an attack, and how confident is he in the willingness and ability of the Government to retaliate in the event of such an attack, as the best form of deterrence?”
“I join that long list of UK Ministers who have raised, at the very highest level in Israel, the most egregious practices in the west bank, designed specifically to prevent a two-state solution, only for Israeli policy to double down. Accordingly, I congratulate the Secretary of State.”
“I am delighted by the reprieve—the New Forest was to be split, and part of it swallowed by Southampton. Will the Secretary of State accept my representation that we want the integrity of the New Forest to remain, and the last thing we want is for it all to be swallowed by Southampton?”
“To address one of the points made by my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings, that takes account of the fact that there may be different levels of need in different areas.”
“Yes, essentially today we are putting these services on a statutory footing. Of course subsequent Governments can change statutes, but this Bill makes it an explicit decision of this House and Parliament, rather than a fiat by Government decision.”
“I will address exactly that point shortly. If a child is not developing properly and is not sleeping, feeding or communicating, parents need to know that they have somewhere to turn.”
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“We are working on projects on hydroelectricity in Nepal and power sector reform and roads in Nigeria. We have launched Energy Africa, working in 14 sub-Saharan African countries to address the needs of 600 million people who are without electricity. Although we only launched the campaign last year, we have proved the root; we kick-started the campaign with the work that we did with M-KOPA, which has put in place some 300,000 solar panels that serve 1 million people. It has also used highly innovative methods, so that power can be paid for using pay-as-you-go mobile phones.”
“A reduction in productivity of some 40% throughout Africa and Asia is accounted for by the lack of necessary infrastructure, and it is estimated that Africa suffers a vital reduction of 2.1% in its annual growth rate as a consequence of the lack of necessary infrastructure. Some 1 billion people have no access to electricity, and 1.3 billion live nowhere near a road. We must address those infrastructure problems. There is an annual deficit of some $3 trillion a year, in terms of the infrastructure that we need to invest in. Most of that must be provided by Governments. Grant aid will remain important for filling about half of that infrastructure gap, but all investors will need to increase their ability to invest massively if we are to do that. That is why we are working with the World Bank and the regional development banks.”
“Gentleman is absolutely right: where elites hijack the lucrative parts of the economy and wreck it, that impoverishes everyone. When a person gets an important job in the Government or the civil service because they are someone’s cousin, rather than capable of carrying out that function, that leads to complete inefficiency. Over and over again, we find Governments getting in the way of the creation of jobs, through unwillingness or lack of capacity to raise revenue to invest in the necessary infrastructure; a lack of regulation, or over-regulation; or a lack of contract law or any other law, or of the rule of law. All those things drive away investment. The real engine of job creation is private sector-led investment. One of the principal barriers to that investment thriving is the lack of necessary infrastructure.”
“Friend referred to the importance of public services. Yes, public services are important; there are important jobs and roles in public services. It is precisely for that reason that we take—and manage—the very considerable risks of working through Government-provided services in places such as Nepal, where our healthcare programme is channelled through Government provision, although it is a corrupt environment. I share the passion of the hon. Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans) for tackling corruption. He is absolutely right, and that is why our programme on governance under SDG 16 is so important to our economic development programme. It is precisely for that reason that we held the anti-corruption summit and, the day before, the summit to engage with civil society on how it deals with that. As I say, the hon.”
“Millions of people have dropped everything that they have known and moved from their homes to the unknown in pursuit of economic activity. We are beginning to notice it as we see that tide of humanity coming up from south-Saharan Africa. Nevertheless, that driver has existed for decades, and we have to address it by providing those jobs. I accept that not any job will do. It is no good having jobs that enslave. That is why we are still concentrating our programmes on work and freedom. There is what we are doing with the International Labour Organisation in Bangladesh, and there is the ethical trading initiative and the responsible, accountable and transparent enterprise initiative. Those are vital, but in the end it all comes down to jobs. The Government have an important role in that regard. My hon.”
“The delivery of this agenda is vital to all the global sustainable development goals across the entire piece, and not just to the most obvious ones—1, 8 and 9. We will not see a reduction in world poverty of the order that we want unless we get a great increase in inclusive growth. In the past, we have had growth that has not generated inclusivity or sufficient jobs. It is vital that we get inclusive growth, because as we have heard so often this morning, we need 600 million new jobs in the next decade; otherwise, we will have a growing army of underemployed, frustrated and increasingly angry young people. As we have heard again this morning, lack of economic opportunity, a job and a livelihood is the principal driver of migration. That has been going on for decades.”
“We have created a new youth and education department to focus on the transition from school to work, and to drive that focus through all the bilateral relationships and all our programmes. We have implemented a new growth diagnostic. This is the focus that my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) demanded there be in every bilateral relationship and every programme. The diagnostic informs every team of the barriers to growth in the countries in which they are working, so that they can devise programmes with the greatest impact on growth. My hon. Friend referred to the new agricultural strategy; it is, as he demanded, focused on smallholder agriculture. We will shortly publish—after we have disposed of that business on 23 June—our new economic development strategy.”
“It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain), and I thank him for his kind words. He referred to my passion, but it is clear that his passion equals, if not exceeds, mine, as does that of the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott). I sometimes imagine that we disagree less than we think, but what is clear is that we all share the same objective and the same passion. Today we have debated a very important, game-changing report. Since that report, we have been pushed in a direction that we were very keen to head in in the first place. We have created a new directorate for economic development by combining five separate departments.”
“CDC has backed some 40,000 GWh of production as a consequence of the move into the power market.”
“The quality of our investment and the fact that we do not tie our aid certainly make our aid of a higher standard. I accept the hon. Lady’s challenge: we need to raise our game, and that is why we use the Private Investment Development Group to leverage more investment. Through an investment of $1.2 billion, we have secured $20 billion from the private sector and $9 billion from international financial organisations to provide early equity, long-term debt and guarantees to meet vital infrastructure needs. Equally, we use CDC, our development capital arm, to blaze a trail and show other investors that there are profitable opportunities even in the most difficult markets. We recapitalised that with some £730 million last year, and we are driving that into the infrastructure sector.”
“The whole piece, including TradeMark East Africa and the trade facilitation agenda, is part of the drive for economic development that is at the centre of everything that we do regarding the provision of jobs. I come back to a point that has been made several times this morning: it is all about jobs. We need 600 million high-quality new jobs that will not impoverish and enslave people. That is what we have to deliver. I defer to my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford to sum up the debate.”
“As an aside, I point out that 80% of our procurement is with British companies simply because they are the most competitive we can find, but my hon. Friend the Member for Henley drew attention to an important point in the piece. This is, of course, an enormous agenda. It is a whole trade facilitation agenda, and my hon. Friend mentioned the importance of trade envoys. We spend about £1 billion a year on trade facilitation and improving the ability of the least developed countries to enter our markets and to trade effectively. Trade dwarfs aid. It is a vital part of the agenda. The hon. Member for Bradford East raised the vital issue of urban planning. It is precisely for the reasons that he gave that we launched the new programme for economic development in cities, and that will be driven forward with a will.”
“My hon. Friend is right. Climate-smart development must be integral to everything we do. It has to be a part of it. It is not a box to be ticked; it must be designed into the programme from the start. My hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) mentioned the prosperity fund in his intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford. I take a slightly different view of the prosperity fund. We are spending all this taxpayers’ money creating opportunities and opening markets, and my breath is taken away when other countries simply move in and take the opportunities that have been created by that investment. The prosperity fund’s primary objective must be to reduce poverty. However, it is right that that fund should make British companies alive to the opportunities available to them. We will not tie our aid.”
“Of course we fund the Palestinian Authority. Our funds are paid to named civil servants and pensioners from an audited and scrutinised list for the delivery of public services. British taxpayers’ money does not fund terrorism.”
“I have had discussions with the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister of the Palestinian Authority and other officials, and I continually make the point that the right hon. Lady rightly makes: if these are welfare payments, they must be made like welfare payments. The reality is that we do not pay them. Our taxpayers’ money goes to build the Palestinian Authority so it is able to morph into the Government of a Palestinian state when that opportunity arises. We pay named civil servants to provide public services.”
“Let me say that we take the issue of incitement very seriously indeed. With respect to the hon. Gentleman’s point about The Jewish Chronicle , I assure him that both I and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State keep that matter under review continually, precisely because it is so controversial. With respect to the matters raised in relation to integration and so on, I understand that I am receiving a delegation from the hon. Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin) to discuss that on Wednesday.”
“Will the hon. Gentleman reflect on the fact that, if all the rich countries of the world had met that commitment when they made it, we might be dealing with very different problems now?”
“Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) reminded us that we have a leadership role as Members of Parliament; our job is to bring our constituents information, to persuade them and, dare I say it, to bring enlightenment. The UK aid strategy sits firmly in our security and defence strategy. The 0.7% spent on international aid and the 2% commitment to NATO are the 2.7% that we spend, in our international interests, on securing a safer, more stable and more prosperous world.”
“I am glad that a number of Members have used the opportunity to evangelise about international development aid, and I want the debate to go well beyond this Chamber. My ambition is to ensure that by the end of the Parliament, more people write to thank us for what we as a kingdom are doing on international aid than to complain about the level of it. I have a duty to represent all my constituents—not only those who have written to me complaining about the level of international aid, but those who have been tweeting all day about how proud they are of our international aid. Equally, I must represent the views of the 99.99% of my constituents who have expressed no opinion whatever. I am glad that the right hon.”
“It is a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott). She is very well informed, and she speaks on the subject with passion. If I may, I would like to take the speech of the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) as my own; it was excellent. A number of my constituents have been driven into a state of apoplexy by stories of how their hard-earned tax money is shovelled out the door without scrutiny of any kind, particularly towards the year end. I am glad that I have been able to refer them to the dfid.gov.uk website, where they can find a point-by-point rebuttal of all the accusations. I respect the petitioners, however, and I thank them for the opportunity that they have afforded us to debate this important issue.”
“I believe passionately that we have to get the democratic legitimacy from our people by persuading them. The moment we explain this to them, they get it. We need to hold their attention and get the opportunity to do that, and this debate gives us that opportunity, so let us build on it.”
“That is a measure of the importance of what we are doing. The bit of the development picture that people get is humanitarian relief. They put their hand in their pocket to the tune of over £100 million after the Nepal earthquake. What we need to get over to them is that the people who appear suddenly to provide that relief and do the search and rescue have to have their core funds covered throughout the year when there is not an earthquake. The success of our intervention in the Nepal earthquake was built on years of investment in resilience beforehand; there was a blood bank in place and a logistics centre for the distribution of emergency aid, which saved seven weeks cumulatively. People rehearsed and rehearsed how to deal with the aftermath. This is what we spend the money on.”
“I am the one who has to be persuaded that the projects are value for money, so I shall be very interested to hear his explanation. The reality is that over the past five years, we have delivered education for 11 million schoolchildren; 69 million people have received financial assistance and services to trade their way out of poverty; 29 million people have benefited from our nutrition programmes; 5 million people, as my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) said, have benefited from having healthcare professionals attend at birth; 63 million people have had access to clean water; 15 million people have been able to cope with climate change; 44 million children have been immunised; and we have delivered emergency care to 13 million people in the wake of 33 disasters.”
“I do not know anyone who spends 99.3% of their income on themselves; I am not sure I want to know such a person, and I am not so sure that they would have any friends. That is equally true of a nation. What influence would we have in the world, and how could we carry our heads high, if that were the case, and we were to abandon this important pledge? It is important to focus what we spend, rigorously demanding value for money, and ensuring that we have the systems to secure that and to drive down costs, so that we get proper value. I am sorry to see that my hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) is not in his place, because he referred to a low bar. I invite him to see me in DFID to explain to me and my officials what this low bar is, because I am the “low bar”.”
“We have to make investments. I am alive to the concerned expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) about development capital. We have to tackle the causes of poverty and injustice, because if we do not deal with those problems at source, we know where they are going: to our doorsteps and our shores. Aid is undoubtedly in our national interest. Overseas aid is also undoubtedly controversial; it has to be. If I am spending British taxpayers’ money on helping the people of Bangladesh who live on the chars to deal with climate change and flooding, it is clearly not available to deal with flood defences in Durham, York or elsewhere. However, I put it this way: we have pledged to spend 0.7% of our national income on international development, which means that we have 99.3% to spend on ourselves.”
“I know what the hon. Gentleman will say, because we have had the argument before. We may secure our national interest through the ability to deploy lethal force, but I put it to the House that often, the deployment of soft power is a much more effective tool of policy. There is no doubt among any of us that it was in our national interest to spend hundreds of millions of pounds on securing an end to the Ebola epidemic. Without doubt, had it been allowed to spread, it would have come to us and caused terror and economic dislocation. Equally, our main effort has to be on economic development in the poorer parts of the world. The reality is that in the end, everything is about jobs. In the next 10 years, the world needs 600 million new jobs if we are to avoid an army of underemployed young people who are frustrated and increasingly angry.”
“Through our presidency of the G8 in 2013 and through the G20 we have led on assisting developing countries in strengthening their tax regimes, and tackling avoidance and evasion. UK overseas territories have agreed to furnish our tax and law enforcement agencies with company beneficial ownership information.”
“We are light years ahead of where we were, and indeed of any ambition expressed by previous Administrations. Full automatic exchange of taxpayer account information will be available from September this year, and company beneficial ownership information will be available to our tax authorities by June next year.”
“We have advanced a huge amount by agreement and leadership, not by having recourse to compulsion. The overseas territories are now well in advance of many of our major trading partners. It is better to proceed by agreement. Much of the information will be available through the initiative for automatic exchange of beneficial ownership registers, to which 33 countries have now signed up.”
“I pay tribute to the National Crime Agency, and the unit within it paid for by DFID, for tracing that international corruption. My right hon. Friend is right. Huge amounts of revenue are being denied to the poorest countries in the world, and we have to do something about that.”
“My right hon. Friend is right. The common reporting standard is vital, together with the automatic exchange of taxpayer account information. Precisely because of that, we have a pilot running in Ghana to draw developing countries into that arrangement.”
“We are vastly in advance of the situation left by previous Administrations, and we are advancing by agreement. That information will be available if countries sign up to the initiative for the automatic exchange of beneficial ownership registers, and next month the United Kingdom will be the first country to publish that information.”
“Those territories certainly have extractives, and we are pushing that agenda. I regularly meet representatives of the extractives industry to drive forward this initiative.”
“We are strengthening Palestinian institutions and supporting economic development. Last year, we supported 60,000 children in school and created thousands of jobs. Results are monitored quarterly.”
“We spent £349 million between 2011 and 2015, and last year we spent £72 million. There is, of course, a difficulty when managing any number of very small projects and initiatives. However, I appreciate the importance the hon. Gentleman draws to this particular need, and I am happy to accommodate him and discuss it with him.”
“The main effort of our interventions in the Palestinian territories remains to deliver an independent and stable Palestinian state. I cannot give any indication of finance now; an announcement will be made in due course.”
“We are concentrating on providing technical assistance and training. We have trained 600 masons in earthquake-resistant building techniques and 150 sub-engineers in the same disciplines. We are concentrating on the worst-affected areas and the more remote areas. We are prioritising the need for police stations and healthcare facilities. We are back in business in healthcare, which was always our main effort, restoring the services to 5.6 million people.”
“We in DFID were actually commissioning mules to carry our relief supplies into the mountains because of the fuel problem arising as a consequence of the blockade. The earthquake put some 600,000 people into poverty, but the blockade drove 800,000 people into poverty. The Nepal chamber of commerce estimated that the blockade did more harm to the economy of Nepal than the earthquake. The hon. Gentleman said that the reconstruction authority, as of 6 January, has now started, well behind what we could have anticipated. It is understaffed, as he says, but nevertheless work has begun. The surveying of needs is supposed to be concluded by the end of this month. Grants have started to be issued. We have issued cash to 100,000 people already. Of the £70 million that we committed, £35 million has been spent and a further £35 million is committed.”
“Let’s get the tourist trade going again.” I entirely understand that attitude and the importance of reopening the tourist trade, but I felt—it was my prejudice—that the determination to show that Nepal was back in business came at the expense of concentration on the continuing need for humanitarian relief, particularly in outlying areas. The hon. Gentleman mentioned the constitution. To be fair, we have been pressing for progress on the constitution for months and months and years and years. To an extent, the earthquake galvanised the political class to push on with the constitution. Unfortunately, what happened thereafter—infighting, the problems in the Terai region and the blockade—led to a very substantial slowing up in any kind of relief effort.”
“Gentleman’s frustration—frustration evident in the House tonight—and the clear frustration of the people of Nepal that after that initial effort the pace of reconstruction was so slow. Clearly, in a country with difficult terrain, the remoteness of the areas most affected, monsoons, and a long winter and therefore a short building season, there should be a greater sense of urgency than would normally apply. That was not my perception when I visited Nepal last summer. The Government’s attitude was: “No, no, it’s over. Nepal is open for business.”
“We trained people to be first responders and for search and rescue. We put a blood bank in place. We created the logistical space, equipment and warehousing at the airport, so that seven weeks of cumulative effort could be saved to respond to what happened. People imagine that after an earthquake all of a sudden from nowhere come resources, with highly trained people with sniffer dogs and so on, but clearly there has to be effort and investment in the core costs of organisations throughout the year so they are ready when there is an earthquake. As the hon. Gentleman so rightly said, we need to spend significantly more on building resilience beforehand. The relief effort was a success and I share the hon.”
“Members can read the book—but I will draw attention to the effort made specifically on behalf of women. Thousands of dignity packs were provided for women in difficult circumstances, as were safe spaces, psychological advice and counselling. The one piece of international development effort that the popular press actually approves of is disaster relief for this sort of emergency, but the hon. Gentleman was right to identify the need to build in resilience beforehand. The lesson of the success of the relief effort in Nepal is that it was built on the millions of pounds spent—including by DFID when he was the Minister responsible—in advance over the years. Let us face it: an earthquake in Kathmandu was no surprise to anyone, but the success was based on the fact that we prepositioned supplies and rehearsed volunteers in their distribution.”
“I thank the hon. Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas) for bringing this issue to the House in such a timely fashion, on the anniversary of the earthquake. I will endeavour to deal with the issues he has raised in the short time available, but first I want to emphasise the success of the relief effort. We have already heard about the tremendous interventions by, for example, Rotary International. The response to the Disasters Emergency Committee was tremendous—DEC raised £85 million. In addition to all that fundraising, through a number of independent organisations, I anticipate that the contribution from British people’s own pockets was in excess of £100 million; we should add to that the £70 million that the Government provided. In the time available, I will not go into itemised detail about the relief effort that we provided—hon.”
“Although there has been an easing recently of the problem in the Terai, I do not believe for one moment that it has gone away. The hon. Gentleman rightly referred to the problem of endemic corruption and the problems with governance and bureaucracy. Nepal must transform its investment environment if there is to be any significant prospect of recovery in the long term. It has huge assets in respect of hydropower—”
“DFID commissioned some 2,000 hours of helicopter flights. We provided Chinooks, which were not used. I am very disappointed that that was the case. We never quite got to the bottom of it, but I would rather stand in this House and say that we believed that helicopters were desperately needed and we provided them, even if they were not used, than find myself standing in this House knowing that helicopters were desperately needed and we did not send them. I think the right decision was made. It cost some £3 million, but emergencies demand such commitments. The reconstruction effort continues. The problem, as I see it, going forward—the hon. Member for Harrow West alluded to it—is that there remain significant political problems in Nepal.”
“We are having conversations all the time with other donors, the Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs and the UN agencies. The hon. Gentleman is right that we need to press for a greater sense of urgency, but frustration has been evidenced in the donor community as well. There is a question of our ability to spend while the specifications of the reconstruction authority about how things are to be done have yet to be delivered. That has been part of the problem and I can understand the frustration of the donor community in that respect. I accept the hon. Gentleman’s challenge to do more to galvanise and take a leadership role in driving that forward.”
“Indeed. That is very important, but equally the focus has to be on reconstruction and on building back better. Principally, the Nepalese must deal with their stifling bureaucracy and the problems that stand in the way of foreign investment. That is the only long-term solution for Nepal. It must deal with the problems of governance and endemic corruption. I see that time is nearly up. I thank the hon. Member for Harrow West again for concentrating the mind of the House on this important issue, and for having so forensically identified the very problems that are holding up progress in Nepal. Question put and agreed to.”
“We anticipate that they will be agreed shortly. We currently measure social progress across the United Kingdom against 60-odd indicators, so there will need to be a measure of mapping. On the “no one left behind” agenda, which is central to everything we do and will determine whether the goals have been met, we in DFID are setting up a cross-Government committee, together with the Department for Work and Pensions and the Office for National Statistics, to drive that forward and ensure that the lessons we have been learning internationally are applied nationally. I need to give my hon. Friend the Member for Bath a moment or two to sum up, but I hope that in my very short speech I have been able to convey both a recognition of the urgency and the fact that there is indeed a plan.”
“However, cross-Government responsibility will be taken by the Secretary of State for International Development—that is appropriate because we are the Department that fought for the goals and we are passionate about them—and she will be supported in that role by the Cabinet Office. It is early days. There have been a number of conversations across Government, and I suspect that we will know more shortly when the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Mr Letwin), appears before the International Development Committee. That evidence will be instructive. Responsibility for measurement will be with the Office for National Statistics. It has already contributed hugely and taken a leadership role in the determination of the 250-odd indicators that have yet to be agreed.”
“Friend the Member for Bath was absolutely right that we have to implement the goals universally, which means doing so here. If we do not do it successfully here, we will have no credibility as an international development force to see that they are developed elsewhere. That is an essential point, and my hon. Friend asked a number of important questions about it. My prejudice is that we are pretty well compliant, but it is not my prejudice that will count. This is a matter for departmental responsibilities. Departments must take ownership of the goals that fall within their terms of reference.”