Clause 3 - International development assistance and gross national income
International Development (Reporting and Transparency) Bill
9:30 am
Gareth Thomas (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for International Development; Harrow West, Labour)
I rise to encourage support for new clause 1 and new schedule 1 and to urge the Committee to vote against clause 3.
The proposed new provisions are a sensible way to clarify the Bill and to avoid it becoming overburdened with detail. My right hon. Friend’s Bill speaks of international development assistance. That might be a term of common parlance, but it is not in general use by development statisticians, and therefore it needs to be adapted.
The requirements on financial reporting will be expressed in general, readily understandable terms, with the definitions of such terms set out in the annual reports that are laid before Parliament, rather than in the Bill itself. That enhances the Bill and helps to avoid it becoming too technical. On that basis, most of the requirements in this area of the Bill and elsewhere are related simply to aid of various kinds. That would be interpreted in the annual report in terms of the internationally agreed definitions of aid that are already in common use. Examples are the use of DFID programme aid or gross public expenditure on aid, both of which are reported on a financial year basis.
The only exception to that general rule of thumb is when there is a requirement to provide data on official development assistance, which is a particular definition of international development assistance that is used by the development assistance committee of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Owing to the importance of the UN’s 0.7 per cent. target for overseas development assistance as a percentage of gross national income, that term—overseas development assistance—will continue to appear specifically in the Bill. I should mention that overseas development assistance is reported on a calendar year basis.
The proposed schedule subsumes all the requirements for financial reporting that are included in the Bill. It subsumes the series of requirements in clause 3, the overseas development assistance gross national income data from clause 6, the regional breakdown of bilateral aid in clause 1, the breakdown of multilateral aid in clause 5, and the sectoral data from clause 4. Paragraph 2(1)(c) of the new schedule sets out a particular requirement to report bilateral aid by sector. It may be helpful if I confirm that such aid is usually broken down by reference to the following broad sectors: economic, education, health, governance, social, humanitarian assistance, rural livelihood and environment.
The hon. Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood) raised the issue of humanitarian assistance on Second Reading. I draw his attention to the proposed new schedule and the reference that it includes on reporting on humanitarian assistance, which I hope he and other Committee members will regard as a helpful step forward.