14:35 Andrew Mitchell (Conservative)

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.

[Source]

14:43 Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)

Well, so much for the soft power superpower. In the year that it hosts the G7, the UK is the only G7 country cutting its aid budget. In the year that it hosts the global climate conference, it is stepping back from global leadership, but it can always find money, as my friend the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) says, for a new royal yacht. There is also always money for weapons of mass destruction on the Clyde.

[Source]

15:08 Layla Moran (Liberal Democrat)

The ink will dry on the PhDs that will be written about what happened in that seat, but the point I am trying to get across to the Government is that this matters. This is not just about the spending on one project here or there. It is the moral thing to do and it is the smart thing to do, but it is also the right thing to do, not just for the country but for their seats. People in those areas understand the interplay. They understand the link. They understand that if we want to sit proudly on the world stage and lead at COP26 but say to other countries across the world, “Do as we say, but don’t look at what we do,” then we are going to lose credibility. I urge the Government: please do not be complacent. Give us our vote, or even better, give us the assurance that 0.7% will return next year—no ifs, no buts.

[Source]

15:38 Kerry McCarthy (Labour)

Saving people’s lives and lifting them out of extreme poverty, particularly in the wake of a pandemic that has had a huge impact in less-developed countries, absolutely must be a priority, but submissions to the International Development Committee’s inquiry show that aid cuts have also harmed numerous environmental charities. Climate Action Network said that there was a lot of uncertainty, with the organisation not knowing where the cuts to climate and environmental programmes were going to fall. Yet it looks as if CDC Group, with its £700 million fossil fuel portfolio—which Tearfund highlighted in its submission to the Committee—will be unaffected. That shows completely the wrong priorities from the Government in the run-up to COP26.

[Source]

15:51 Sarah Owen (Labour)

I wholeheartedly agree with Gordon Brown when he says that the decision to gut the UK aid budget is a life or death situation for so many people across the world. Our collective aim should be to end the wars, the climate change, the poverty and the tyranny that leave people across the world poorer and in search of safety, but when we see the Government failing on our global commitments, taking a step back and lowering our standing on the world stage, our collective aims grow so much more difficult to achieve. Until we have a Prime Minister with a sense of moral and collective responsibility, and until we have a Government who truly live up to the promise of a global Britain—where we are all proud of taking our obligations and responsibilities seriously and standing tall on the world stage again—the least we can do is give our fair share of international aid.

[Source]

16:17 Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)

There is a broader problem of the signal that this decision sends to the rest of the world on climate action. The cuts will diminish the ability of the world’s poorest to cope with climate change, and those people are often the hardest hit by it. Taking the water cuts, for example, there is the context of increasing droughts. We need to strengthen the resilience to drought of communities in poor countries, not weaken it. This aid budget cut also means a cut to the UK’s highly effective programme to prevent deforestation in Indonesia. The green economic growth programme focused on providing sustainable livelihoods for local populations who often end up working in harmful environmental practices such as deforestation due to the lack of alternative ways to make a living. The UK programme was changing that; now it has abruptly been cancelled, despite its success.

The Environment Bill is currently going through the Lords, and promises to be world leading on climate change and deforestation. It will be completely undermined if we are cutting funding to tackle deforestation abroad at the same time as making commitments in legislation. There does not appear to be any joined-up thinking—dare I say it—across Government. We are taking strong domestic action on the environment, but these cuts signal that we are not serious enough about tackling the issue globally.

[Source]

16:59 Neale Hanvey (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (Alba) [V]

At a time when the most disadvantaged across the world face the peril of poverty and covid, many countries are expanding their support, such as Canada, France, the United States of America and others. During the emergency debate on 8 June, the Government were warned that this cut would embarrass the UK at the G7 summit and later this year at COP26. The Prime Minister did not account for his lacklustre performance that overshadows even this. A cut of 0.2% may sound tiny to most, but the impact is the difference between life and death for so many. At that time the Chief Secretary to the Treasury said the economy was doing well, so why the cut, forcing austerity on those who can least withstand it?

[Source]

17:09 Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)

We heard many from across the House say that if we led on this issue others would follow. They did. Many European countries have followed and are now reaching 0.7% targets. Canada has increased its target. America has increased its spending by £16 billion. We were leading. I ask about the message it sends to the world. In a year in which we host the G7 and COP26, and will have a good presence at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting, we have the opportunity to lead by example.

[Source]

17:29 Sir David Amess (Southend West) (Con)

I mentioned the Maldives, and I have declared my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. The Maldives economy is effectively based on two things: tourism and tuna. The coronavirus pandemic has ruined the tourism industry and the 20% import tariffs that we impose on tuna are harshly damaging the economy—I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister might mention that, but if he does not have time, perhaps he could write to me about it. As chair of the all-party British-Maldives parliamentary group, I think we should be helping the sustainable line and rod-caught tuna industry by significantly reducing tariffs, especially as we hosted the G7 and will be hosting COP26 in Glasgow later this year.

We must protect the British Council in order to follow the Government’s global Britain agenda. Soft power is a vital component of that plan. Soft power should be at the heart of our policy making, with a focus on international trade deals and tackling climate change. It therefore comes as a great surprise and disappointment that the British Council has been forced to close in 20 countries including Australia, after agreeing the provisional terms of the UK-Australia free trade agreement and after the UK hosted the G7 summit in Cornwall, which was attended by world leaders from countries affected by the British Council closures, including the United States of America.

[Source]

17:56 John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con) [V]

The second issue that has been raised in the debate is that colleagues fear a loss of influence. I would like to reassure them that surely this year, of all years, is when we have seen a major advance in British influence. We have just taken our full seat with a vote on the World Trade Organisation, and we are busily signing off a number of trade agreements around the world that we could not have done in previous years. The Prime Minister has just very successfully chaired the G7 and has helped to bring together the seven most powerful western democracies in terms of economic strength to reach important agreements to improve the world outlook. We have COP26 coming up, when I trust that British chairmanship will be astute and helpful in order to agree something that many Governments in the world talk a lot about, though not all of them do as much as we do to try and see things through. We are very much the second most important member of NATO in terms of contribution after the United States of America, and we are a force within NATO to make sure that it is used for the good, as a force for peace.

[Source]

18:05 Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)

I have been consistent in my clear message to this House: over the next five years, the world is getting more dangerous, not less, and more complex, not less. Authoritarianism is on the rise, new power bases are emerging, and states are starting to rearm at an alarming rate. To compound matters, we now have the growing challenge of climate change, which is already having an impact on security and governance in some of the world’s most vulnerable regions. Storms, floods and droughts will affect agricultural productivity, damage economies and lead to mass migration, most notably from Africa to Europe. This goes back to the point about where the challenge is: it is not in Dover; it is actually in Africa. Simply put, global security in our ever complex and confusing world is on a worrying glide path, and right now there is no grand plan to alter the current trajectory. The threat picture is greater and more complex than during the cold war, and it requires addressing.

[Source]

18:14 Christian Wakeford (Labour)

With generous and effective aid spending and a global diplomatic presence comes our soft power and soft influence, which places the UK at the heart of critical debates and gives us the legitimacy and ability to guide international action on key global challenges such as climate change. When the UK speaks on such issues, the world listens.

I am proud of Britain, and I am proud of a global Britain, especially in a post-Brexit world. I am proud of the values we stand for and the progress that we have made through our aid spending, and I am sure I will be proud of what we achieve in future years, too, as soon as we go back to 0.7%. As we recover from covid, the next big thing to focus on is climate change. Again, 0.7% is fundamental to addressing climate change.

[Source]

18:20 Chris Law (SNP)

If I needed to drive the point home harder, let us return to Scotland, where COP26 will be hosted. I was shocked to learn that just weeks after the UK’s COP26 President, the right hon. Member for Reading West (Alok Sharma) visited Indonesia and called upon it to “move forward” with plans to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050, the Foreign Office cancelled with immediate effect a green growth programme designed to prevent deforestation, three years into a five-year programme. If that is not bonkers, I do not know what is.

In September, The Times reported that the Chancellor was looking to defer billions of pounds from foreign aid to pay for upgrades to British intelligence and defence capabilities. Without any attempt to disguise it, in the same month that the cut from 0.7% to 0.5% was announced, a windfall was delivered for the defence budget. Money that should have been spent on preventing famine, malnutrition and needless loss of life is now being spent on enhanced cyber-weapons. Money that should have been spent on conflict prevention is now being spent on AI-enabled drones. Money that should have been spent on protecting our planet and marginalised communities from the devastating effects of climate change is now being spent on increasing stockpiles of nuclear weapons.

While the UK Government are abruptly ending deforestation prevention projects vital to global climate change efforts, the Scottish Government are doubling their world-leading climate justice fund. While the UK Government are alone in slashing their international development spend by a third at this critical juncture for the world, the Scottish Government are working with their partners worldwide and increasing their international development fund by 50%. While the Scottish Government fulfil their role as a good global citizen, this little Britain approach of the UK Government does not even blush at the evidence that millions of lives will be lost by their incoherent, unnecessary and, frankly, callous cuts.

[Source]

18:29 Stephen Doughty (Labour)

Gender-based violence is on the rise, with an additional 31 million cases predicted. Some 9.7 million students are at risk of dropping out of school, and 11 million girls are at risk of not coming back to school because of covid. The UN estimates that 132 million people could fall into food insecurity and famine. That will only be exacerbated by the climate crisis that we already know is having an impact and is coming.

[Source]

18:43 The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (James Duddridge)

As Minister for Africa, I am glad to say we will be spending over half our bilateral aid budget in the African continent, focusing on key issues. Rather than going to just Africa, I thought it would be useful to explain the process the Foreign Secretary and his Ministers took. The Foreign Secretary outlined seven priorities to the House on 26 November. Underlying all of them—or overarching them—is the aim of reducing poverty. First, there is a focus on climate and biodiversity, particularly because of COP26. There was a focus on a flagship target of £11.6 billion of international aid on international climate finance. Our second priority is global health security, for obvious reasons, given the pandemic. A lot of our programmes have been repurposed towards covid, although we focus on a number of other areas, preventable deaths of mothers, newborn babies and children—

[Source]