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Today I want to deliver a message from the new Coalition Government of Britain directly
to the millions of people around the world who are battling against poverty, disease
and injustice. Our message is this: the people and Government
of Britain are on your side, and we will use every tool in our policy armoury – aid,
trade, climate policy, diplomacy, business investment, and more – to champion justice,
freedom, fairness and prosperity for you. And I want to convey a message directly to
the hardworking taxpayers of Britain: your contribution to our life-saving UK aid budget
imposes a deep responsibility on this Government, and on me as Secretary of State for International Development,
to deliver and demonstrate value for money in aid.
I will work night and day to honour that commitment.
To those big messages I add a third which I address to another audience – to all those
involved in international development. Be prepared for change.
Not a change in our levels of compassion, nor in our understanding of the deep value
of international development. Rather, a change of approach, a fundamental
change that empowers people, that creates and sustains wealth rather than simply redistributing it.
A change in how we position development in the 21st century.
So it is here with you today that I will set out how we will apply our Coalition Government’s
shared values to the great cause of international development.
I will argue: Firstly, that global poverty
both affronts our moral conscience and is a direct threat to Britain’s vital national
interests. Secondly, that well-spent UK aid is amongst
the most effective investments we can make – but that we need radical steps to ensure
that our aid achieves all it can. And thirdly, that transparency, accountability,
responsibility, fairness and empowerment will be our watchwords.
Fourthly, I will announce two new concrete steps we will take to achieve this: the creation
of an independent aid watchdog, and our commitment to a UK Aid Transparency Guarantee.
And fifthly, I will argue that although aid is important for development, we must use
the whole of the British government’s policy spectrum to tackle global poverty.
The imperatives of creating wealth and tackling misery, exploitation and poverty are hard-wired
into the British DNA.
Our vision will always be about making life better for the poorest people in the poorest countries.
As simple – and as complex – as that.
It is worth reminding ourselves of the scale of that challenge which confronts us.
8.8 million children die before the age of five each year.
Half a million women die due to complications in pregnancy or childbirth.
More than a third of children in Africa are short for their age due to malnutrition –
this stunting affects brain development.
72 million children are missing out on primary education.
Every day nearly 25,000 children die from easily-preventable diseases.
More than 33 million people are infected with ***/AIDS.
There are more than 14 million AIDS orphans in sub-Saharan Africa,
more than all the children in Britain.
Every hour, over 300 people become infected with *** and 225 people die from AIDS…and
31 of these are children.
Clearly, we must act, and act now, to right these wrongs and end this terrible waste of
human potential. But promoting global prosperity is also firmly
in Britain’s national interest. We’re all in this together.
If we don’t tackle the root causes of our problems we will spend much more time in future
trying to deal with the symptoms.
Development is good for our economy, our safety, our health, our future.
It is, quite simply, tremendous value for money: the best return on investment that
you’ll find anywhere in government.
There is clear evidence to show that effective aid works miracles.
In 2007/08 alone, British Aid Trained more than 100,000 teachers.
Supplied just short of 7 million anti-malaria bednets.
Vaccinated 3 million children against measles. Brought clean water to almost 1 million people.
Provided electricity to close on 200,000 people. And just look at this statistic: British aid
pays for five million children in developing countries to go to primary school every day.
That’s roughly the same number as go to primary school in Britain yet, it costs only
2.5 per cent of what we spend here. That is real value for money.
Of course, there are those who argue that in these difficult times aid and aspiration
are inevitable casualties of austerity. Collateral damage.
I disagree. This is a time to reaffirm our promises to the world’s poor people, not
abandon them. We won’t balance the books on the backs
of the world’s poorest.
We resolved, in our Coalition programme for government, to honour our commitment to spend
0.7% of GNI on overseas aid from 2013, and to enshrine this commitment in law.
We will keep aid untied from commercial interests, and maintain DFID as an independent department,
focussed on reducing poverty. We will stick to the rules laid down by the
OECD about what spending counts as aid. To the British taxpayer I say this: our aim
is to spend every penny of every pound of your money wisely and well. We want to squeeze
every last ounce of value from it. We owe you that.
And I promise you as well that in future, when it comes to international development,
we will want to see hard evidence of the impact your money makes.
Not just dense and impenetrable budget lines but clear evidence of real change.
Tackling the scandal of maternal mortality is particularly important.
Half a million women die during pregnancy or childbirth every year, a figure that has
barely fallen in the past two decades in many regions.
So we will work to strengthen health systems and family planning facilities in developing
countries, including taking steps to improve access to well-trained midwives and emergency
obstetrics care. Independent evaluation of British aid is absolutely
crucial. There is something a bit too cosy and self-serving
about internal evaluation. Reviews that focus on process and procedure
miss the real issue: what did the money achieve? What change resulted from it?
How were lives made better? We need a fundamental change of direction
– we need to focus on results, outputs and outcomes, not just inputs.
So today I can announce that we have taken the first steps towards creating a new independent
aid watchdog to review the effectiveness of DFID programmes.
And we will modify the way that programmes are designed, so that gathering rigorous evidence
is built in from the day they start. We will never maintain support for our growing
aid budget unless we can offer to the British public independently verified evidence that
it is being well spent.
The philosophy of empowerment will also be central to our approach.
We want poor people to be masters and owners of the international development system, and
not passive recipients of it. If empowerment is a key component of Big Society
development, then so too is transparency. Transparency for the taxpayer and transparency
for the recipient. This is an agenda that President Obama has
led in the US. Indeed, USAID’s Administrator, Raj Shah
has promised to usher in an era of ‘extreme transparency’.
So today I’m pleased to announce a new UK Aid Transparency Guarantee that will make
our aid fully transparent to citizens both in the UK and in recipient countries.
The UK Aid Transparency Guarantee will help to create a million independent aid watchdogs
– people around the world who can see where aid money is supposed to be going – and
shout if it doesn’t get there. The Guarantee commits us to publishing full
information about DFID projects and programmes on our website - in a way that is user-friendly
and meaningful. I see DFID as a key, joined-up, integrated
department, a bright star in the Whitehall constellation, a department of state for development
in the developing world. That’s why DFID has a seat at the Cabinet
table and it’s why I won’t be satisfied until our message rings down the corridors
of each and every department in Whitehall.
So now as our Coalition Government starts
on its agenda for change, let us bring international development to the forefront of our efforts.
The prize is great: a better life for millions of people, and a safer, more prosperous world
for Britain. Thank you very much.