Clause 1 - Development assistance
International Development Bill [Lords]
10:00 am
Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough, Conservative)
My hon. Friend is highly intelligent and has been a personal friend for the past 25 years, but I simply do not accept his reasoning. If one has a moral and ethical foreign or international development policy, one does not try to second-guess those organisations. One simply says that we will do what is right. Is not that the sole point of the Bill? We will not give aid on the basis that we shall acquire influence or help British companies to operate here and there. We give aid on the basis that we shall relieve poverty. It is perfectly ethical, sensible and reasonable to say that the British taxpayer will not give aid to any programme that can trickle down to coercive population control programmes.
What has been happening in the US? It has been paying attention to the matter for a long time. For the past 25 years both United States administrative directives and congressional actions have severely restricted US population assistance in various ways. More recent executive regulations and appropriation orders have prohibited indirect support for coercive family planning. Let us look at the history. People will immediately suppose that it is the Bush regime and a Republican Congress and a Republican President who are influenced by their own political imperatives. In fact it is far more complicated. I shall go through the evidence as quickly as I can. What I propose is similar to what President Clinton proposed, and he was not an anti-abortion fanatic: I am not coming at this from a mid-west, right-wing point of view.
At the 1994 Mexico City conference, the then US Administration—dare I say it, the Reagan Administration; I hope that that will not upset hon. Members too much—established the requirement that UNFPA provide
``concrete assurances that [it] is not engaged in, or does not provide funding for, abortion or coercive family programmes.''
Concern then was highest over UNFPA's activities in China's coercive family planning practices. At the time the Reagan Administration reportedly held up $19 million allocated for UNFPA until the organisation could provide the necessary assurances.
Subsequently, Congress legislated a more restrictive UNFPA policy, aimed at coercive Chinese family planning programmes and UNFPA's continuing operations in the country, by enacting the Kemp-Kasten amendment. Its language prohibited the use of appropriated funds for any organisation or programme supporting or participating ``in the management'' of a programme of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilisation. Accordingly, in September 1985, $10 million of the $46 million that had been earmarked for UNFPA was redirected to other programmes. That partly answers my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis). Obviously the US Congress was trying to find a way through these difficult matters and to help UNFPA in other ways.
Between 1986 and 1993, no US funding for UNFPA was granted. Following the election of President Clinton, US funding for UNFPA was resumed. However, even under President Clinton, Congress reduced the US contribution by the amount that UNFPA spent in China. When UNFPA started its current so-called voluntary programme in China, Congress prohibited American support for the financial year 1999. Congress resumed UNFPA funding in 2000–01 but under the condition that the $25 million earmarked would be reduced by whatever amount UNFPA programmes for China cost.
That is the decision of the US Congress, a body that has huge amounts of research material available to it. My amendment would effect an arrangement similar to that of the Clinton Administration. The Minister will be pleased to hear that I am approaching the end of my remarks—[Hon. Members: ``Hear, hear.''] I am sorry to take the Committee's time but I have tried to consider the evidence reasonably.
The Minister must ensure that United Kingdom grants do not fund programmes involving coercive population control, such as those in China. Currently, all DFID's funding is unrestricted for UNFPA and IPPF. It comprises one big cheque with no strings attached. My amendment would insist that the Secretary of State specify programmes for which UNFPA and IPPF could spend DIFD grants, thus excluding any use of money in China. That is a sensible policy, which would not prevent the Secretary of State from funding population programmes. I have views on such programmes, but my views are irrelevant. The Secretary of State should not provide a big cheque without knowing what it is for. I want to attach strings to that cheque.
The Government claim to have an ethical foreign policy. The House has a duty to scrutinise that policy and to insist that not one penny of UK taxpayers' money funds appalling practices.
This is not just a dry debate in a Committee Room in the House of Commons. The director of the Channel 4 programme ``The Dying Rooms'' described an orphanage in China:
``Every single baby in this orphanage was a girl . . . the only boys were mentally or physically disabled. 95 per cent. of the babies we saw were able-bodied girls. The most shocking orphanage we visited lay, ironically, just 20 minutes from one of the five star international hotels that herald China's emergence from economic isolation.''
That is just one example. A newspaper article based on evidence from the respected organisation Amnesty International reported:
``A retired doctor had rescued the newborn child from the cesspit of a men's lavatory, where he had been tossed to die. Liu Juyu took the baby to a clinic where she was confronted by five birth control officials. Amnesty says they snatched the baby, threw him to the ground, kicked him and took him away to be drowned in a paddy field.''
The debate is not dry, intellectual or academic; it is about real people and suffering. British taxpayers' money should not fund such abominable practices.