Overseas Aid (Hansard, 28 February 1994)

§ 40. Mrs. Roche
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on the level of overseas aid.

§ The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr. Alastair Goodlad)
Provision for aid this year is more than £2.1 billion.

§ Mrs. Roche
Will the Minister explain why his Department appears to ignore its stated policy of giving aid to those countries that have good government and are among the poorest in the world? Instead, it favours countries that are major purchasers of British weapons, such as Malaysia and Indonesia.

§ Mr. Goodlad
There is no connection whatever between the sale of defence equipment to recipients of aid and the aid programme. The good government criteria which we apply to aid are extremely important, as are the criteria for tackling poverty. Eighty per cent. of our bilateral aid to developing countries was spent in the poorest countries in 1992–93. One of our priority objectives is to help developing countries to design and implement poverty reduction strategies. There is, therefore, no basis whatever for the hon. Lady's allegations.

§ Mr. Fabricant
Is my hon. Friend aware that, in an analysis of overseas aid, the United Nations said that Britain's overseas aid was equivalent to the sixth highest in the world?

§ Mr. Goodlad
My hon. Friend is absolutely correct. Britain maintains a substantial aid programme, which is the sixth largest in the world.

§ Mr. Tom Clarke
Does the Minister recall that the Under-Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Mr. Lennox-Boyd), who was put up to answer overseas development questions a few weeks ago, assured me our aid programme is not and will not be linked to arms sales"?—[Official Report, 7 February 1994; Vol. 237, c. 17.] Is the Minister aware that the Foreign Secretary admitted on Friday that aid and arms were entangled with the negotiation of the arms deal with Malaysia signed in 1988? Has British aid been entangled with the sale of arms on other occasions?

§ Mr. Goodlad
I repeat that our aid programme is not linked to arms sales. As my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary said on 25 January in a written answer to the right hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham), During discussions in 1988 about the proposed memorandum of understanding on defence sales, the Malaysians expressed their wish to make a reference to aid. A protocol was signed during the visit to Kuala Lumpur in March 1988 by the then Defence Secretary, my noble Friend, Lord Younger of Prestwick. This set out the Malaysian Government's intention to buy defence equipment from the United Kingdom, with the details to be elaborated in the later memorandum. The protocol included a reference to 'aid in support of non-military aspects under this programme.' After consultation with ministerial colleagues in London, the Secretary of State for Defence wrote to the Malaysian Minister of Finance in June 1988 to say that aid could not be linked to defence sales"—

§ Mr. Campbell-Savours
On a point of order, Madam Speaker.

§ Madam Speaker
Order. The Minister will know that I have asked for brisk answers to questions. Overseas development has only 10 minutes, so I repeat my request.

§ Mr. Goodlad
Thank you, Madam Speaker. My right hon. Friend said: As a result the issue was not taken up in the memorandum of understanding on defence procurement which the British and Malaysian Prime Ministers signed in September 1988, and which did not cover aid. Our aid programme is not linked to arms sales—[Official Report, 25 January 1994; Vol. 236, c. 145–46.]— however much the Opposition may continue to repeat that it is.

§ Mr. Simon Hughes
Just to be absolutely clear about this, and so that the Minister cannot be accused of being economical with the actualité, can he tell us whether aid, now or in the past, has ever been entangled with defence and arms sales—yes or no?

§ Mr. Goodlad
To avoid the risk of being accused of giving excessively long answers, I refer the hon. Gentleman to what I have just said.

§ Sir Donald Thompson
Does my right hon. Friend agree that all this fuss is seen by business men in my constituency as, at best, humbug and, at worst, cynicism?

§ Mr. Goodlad
My hon. Friend is right. There is a rich mixture of humbug and cynicism among Opposition Members. They will not tell us whether they are in favour of defence sales, whether they are in favour of the aid and trade provision or whether they are in favour of destroying jobs—so we must assume that they are in favour of the latter.