International Development – a hard-headed assessment

By Olly Deed

Readers of this blog might regale in horror at the title of this post. We’re all idealists in the Labour Party. Our commitment to international aid comes not from our desire to see Britain enhance its strategic influence on the international stage but from a deep rooted belief that we, the rich nations of the West, have an obligation to help the worlds poorest.

Don’t worry, I share that belief. I’m proud of the fact that Labour reshaped the discourse on international development. We created the Department for International Development (DFID), completed with its own ministerial team, civil servants and budget. Under the leadership of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, Britain consistently made the case for significant international investment and focus on development policy. And the Labour Party led the way in calling for international development spending to reach 0.7% of GNI, which the coalition government will now entrench into law.

None of this would have been achieved under a Conservative government.

But try selling those achievements to your friends and family in a time of fiscal austerity. Go and speak to the average person in the street and ask him or her, whether the British government should be spending any money on international development and a great deal would say no. The reaction I normally get when I tell friends or family that Britain will spend £8bn on aid in 2010-11 and £11.5bn in 2014-15, I’m normally met with a tirade of four letter words. The anger of the Question Time audience last week rather encapsulated the attitudes that I come across when talking about development spending.

I don’t think that these people are uncaring or inconsiderate. The animosity of the public towards international development points to the failure of politicians from every party to make a coherent, holistic case for international development spending. Even in a time of austerity, the case is strong and I want to make my small contribution to re-stating the case for international development.

The humanitarian case for international development is very clear. We live in a world where the richest nations are drowning in material wealth and the poorest don’t have access to basic water and sanitation facilities, food and education. We need not restate the humanitarian case for aid; the pictures of destitution make the case for development spending. The statistics only serve to reinforce the case. I defy anyone to walk by on the other side, when they learn that one in eight people across the world lack access to safe water supplies, over a billion people in the world don’t have enough food to be healthy and hundreds of millions will never access education services in their life time. Lives are needlessly lost and talented unnecessarily wasted. The case has been made and we will continue to make it as long as we are members of the Labour Party.

That quite frankly is not enough to win the argument though. In order to make the holistic case for international development, Labour needs also to be more hard headed in its case for international development. Never let it be said that it isn’t in Britain’s strategic interest to allocate money to development spending. The reality is poverty breeds terrorism. Yes, the individuals at the top of terrorist organisations tend to be wealthy, well educated individuals. However, the radical distortion of Islam that has been allowed to ferment in Northern Africa and parts of the Middle East, occurs because people with no prospects of improving their lot tend to turn to extremism. History shows us this.

Yemen is a prime example of this in action. The country has become the base for “Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula”. An increasing number of terrorist plots against the United Kingdom and other western nations emanate from Yemen. And why? Well, the UNDP reports that 45% of the population in Yemen live on less than a day and according to World Bank statistics 41% of under-5s in Yemen are malnourished. Literacy rates and health outcomes are of an unacceptable standard and the government lost legitimacy in many parts of the country many years ago. Look at a wide range of statistics and you don’t find a pretty picture.

Put quite simply, a terrorist organisation like Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has the space and impetus to exploit the destitution and poverty in Yemen, offering a plethora of disenfranchised young men and women ready to turn to extremism with the promise of a happier and more prosperous life. Afghanistan, the base from which Al-Qaeda orchestrated the 9/11 atrocities offered a similar picture.

Britain’s interests are best served by bolstering our development efforts across the world. If we allow poverty to intensify and spread, even during a time of austerity, we will face greater threats in the future. The best way to combat terrorism is to remove its key ingredient; poverty.

Britain’s commitment to international development also says something about our role in an ever changing and globalised world. Over the next five years we will see an unprecedented retrenchment of Britain’s hard power capability. Amongst other measures, the coalition has decided to withdraw the Nimrod MRA4 from service, consign Britain’s short take off and vertical landing (STOVL) capability to the dustbin of history and leave us without a carrier strike capability for 10 years. These measures will have a dramatic impact on Britain’s hard power capability for the foreseeable future.

Britain will remain the second largest defence spender in North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), remaining above the unofficial 2% GDP NATO defence spending target, but it will still have to cultivate a new role on the world stage. China and India are growing at an exceptionally fast rate and their military capabilities will always dwarf ours, because of the sheer scale of manpower and resources available to them. So why not focus on intelligently using our soft power and using development spending as a tool in our soft power armoury?

To a certain extent we already lead the world in this area. We will be the first nation to achieve the UN’s 0.7% GNI target for international development spending whilst enshrining it into legislation; a real statement of intent. Blair and Brown pushed development at G8 and G20 meetings and made some progress. There is absolutely no reason why couldn’t go further in the future.

The more Britain can tangibly show its commitment to development policy, the more traction we will have in multilateral institutions, such as the European Union and the United Nations, where there is potential to develop a global plan in the battle against poverty. The more we commit the more leverage we have over our allies, in our attempts to get them to commit to.

Hard power will also be an important to permanent members of the UN Security Council, like Britain, but it is about time that a nation like ours takes the lead in thrusting international development to the top of the international agenda.

The reality is that voters do not respond to issues like international development in the same way that we as Labour Party activists do. When jobs in the UK are at risk, when living standards are falling and troop numbers are being cut, this is a difficult argument to make. When you frame the debate in the arguments made above, you start to make progress with the international aid sceptics.

The Tories are half-hearted in their passion for international development. They will probably keep their domestic commitments, if only for the vigour with which our shadow team and the Labour Campaign for International Development will campaign. But they lack the vision to carve out a role for Britain on the world stage.

Labour has 4 years in opposition at least. If we can spend that time restating the case for international development, taking a strategic, hard-headed approach to aid and articulating a vision for Britain’s role in the globalised world, grounded in an intelligent soft power strategy, then we may have the space to change the lives of millions across the world.