Commonwealth Development Corporation Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 3:27 pm on 29 November 2016.

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Photo of Stephen Doughty Stephen Doughty Labour/Co-operative, Cardiff South and Penarth 3:27, 29 November 2016

As I shall come on to explain more fully, there has been a significant change and there has been a narrowing, but there is still a significant difference. If we look at the bulk of the spending still being in India, we see a significant divergence from DFID’s priorities, as I shall come on to show. We were told that aid to India had ended, but apparently it has not.

This is also significant when coupled with an answer I received to a parliamentary question. I discovered that the amount of aid—ODA—to be spent by Government Departments other than DFID is set to increase from 18% this year to 26% in 2019. That is over a quarter of our aid spending going through Departments other than DFID. Even if we focus on the lower end of the implied proposal to spend billions extra via the CDC by the end of the spending review—let alone the £12 billion—we could be looking at anywhere from 35% to 45% of the DFID budget being spent, but not by DFID in the traditional sense. If the Secretary of State used her full power and more quickly than expected, it could be even higher. It is particularly ironic that the Secretary of State who promised us greater effectiveness, transparency and accountability in our aid spending appears to be willing to hand over billions of our aid funding to less transparent and less accountable parts of government.