The following amendment has been selected: amendment 1 in the name of Rhun ap Iorwerth.

We now move on to the United Kingdom Independence Party debate on the foreign aid budget and I call on Neil Hamilton to move the motion—Neil Hamilton.

Motion NDM6309 Neil Hamilton

To propose that the National Assembly for Wales:

1. Believes that, whilst there is a case to support humanitarian and emergency aid to poorer countries especially in specific crises, it makes no sense to fix the foreign aid budget at an arbitrary 0.7 per cent of gross national income (GNI).

2. Notes that the UK national debt has been doubled since 2009 and now stands at £1.6 trillion, which equates to £22,000 for every UK man, woman and child.

3. Believes that the wellbeing of future generations must be considered when making all public spending decisions and that the foreign aid budget should be evaluated by the UK Government in the context of other pressing needs at home.

4. Calls for the repeal of the International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Act 2015, which enshrined the 0.7 per cent target figure in UK law.

5. Believes that much of the foreign aid budget is wasted, diverted by corruption and spent unproductively.

6. Calls on the Welsh Government to urge the UK Government to reduce foreign aid target spending to 0.2 per cent of GNI, which is similar to the US, Italian and Spanish aid budgets.

7. Believes that the £8 billion savings which would be released should be redirected proportionately to the UK nations and spent on deserving causes like the NHS or social housing.

Motion moved.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I move the motion in my name on the agenda. Of course, a lot of the foreign aid budget does a lot of good in the world, but only 16 per cent of the £13 billion, £14 billion, £15 billion that we spend on foreign aid goes on such projects. The overwhelming majority of it goes on what are called the Government’s other strategic long-term goals, whether that is on climate change policy or pacification or trying to ensure that corruption is rooted out. All these things, perhaps to a greater or lesser extent, may be good in themselves, but the capacity to monitor and to evaluate what they do is limited and sometimes non-existent, and so we’re effectively pouring money into a black hole, where it gets diverted to purposes of which we certainly would not approve.

I’m aided in the argument I’m going to put today by an article that was written by Grant Shapps just a short time ago. He was the Minister of State at the Department for International Development until about less than two years ago. He has had a Damascene conversion of the kind that our motion today adumbrates, because he described foreign aid spending as ‘out of control’. He’s called for the department over which he half presided to be abolished and has attacked its profoundly worrying tendency to shovel cash out of the door.

Now, if we’re talking about maybe £8 billion, which is the figure that our motion mentions, that we could spend on other things, whether it be the health service or anything else, this is something that we should certainly consider very seriously.

Grant Shapps described in his article how, in the Foreign Office, he would protest to African dictators about their denial of human rights and democratic values, but then, with his Department for International Development hat on, he says,

I would rifle through my red box (of ministerial papers) to find cheques for hundreds of millions of pounds payable to the same countries…. Unsurprisingly, they concluded that Britain did not really mind about these minor abuses of rights. Why else did all this British cash continue to pour in?’

So, foreign aid can often be counterproductive in what it does. It’s nearly half a century now since Professor Peter Bauer, the professor of international development and economics at the London School of Economics, said that foreign aid is something that is paid by poorer people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries. We all know of the many abuses that have occurred over a great many years.

Now, £250-odd million a year is spent, for example, in Nigeria. A lot of that goes in support of the Nigerian Government’s attempts to wipe out Boko Haram, now one of the greatest dangers in the world of Islamist extremism. But, western officials who operate within Nigeria are very concerned that the Government of Nigeria’s recently elected leader, President Muhammadu Buhari, is misusing that aid to persecute his own political opponents. Since he came to power in May 2015, a number of prominent members of the former ruling People’s Democratic Party have been arrested and imprisoned without charge, and amongst those detained are the party’s official spokespersons.

These kinds of abuses should cause us to wake up. Nigeria also has, you may be surprised to learn, a space programme. They have a space agency that hopes to send rockets up into space by 2028. It’s alleged—[Interruption.]

I shall, when I finish the point.

[Continues.]—that that is absorbing hundreds of millions of pounds of Nigeria’s public expenditure, but they don’t publish the figures, so we don’t know. I give way to Rhianon.

Thank you very much. In regard to the use of foreign aid, there are issues in terms of the way some countries are using it. This is acknowledged and this should be being correctly policed, but that absolutely does not undermine the purposes of foreign aid, and you’ve mentioned Boko Haram. Would you agree that 0.7 per cent of GDP is appropriate and that all Scandinavian countries spend far more than we do on foreign aid?

There are only five countries in the world that spend more than we do on foreign aid, and 0.7 as a percentage of GDP is a purely arbitrary figure plucked out of the air and has no more significance than 0.5 or 1 per cent. Taking the Member’s point in a more general sense, why should we not increase the foreign aid budget by four or five times on that basis? All these things are worth doing in the world. There are lots of problems that other countries have that are very severe, but we can’t go on simply taking on these burdens ourselves when we’ve got so many problems to solve in our own country. Until we get the systems in place whereby we can evaluate value for money properly, then this is just an exercise in, as Grant Shapps described, ‘shovelling money out the door.’ Mr Andrew Dickens, who was an official in the overseas aid department in the National Audit Office said that, when he was auditing overseas development, the only audit possible of multilateral aid was to check that the sums paid to international organisations matched the amounts pledged. Any real audit of the projects supported had to be done by the organisation’s own auditors. Well, self-auditing audits are not worth the paper they’re printed on.

There are lots of egregious abuses, which I won’t weary the Assembly by repeating today, which would be found in the archives of the ‘Daily Mail’ and easy consulted, but the kinds of projects that I mentioned in relation to Nigeria absorb very, very significant sums indeed, which, in our view, would be better spent at home on areas such as the health service. The Labour Party’s manifesto in the Westminster election that is currently going on says that they’re going to spend another £37 billion on the national health service—a figure plucked out of the air. It’s as good as any other figure, I suppose, but you could always add a few noughts to it, no doubt, on this principle that money grows on trees. The Labour Party today seems to think that the economic model we should be following is that of Venezuela, which should be one of the richest countries in the world, but which has been reduced to poverty, destitution and economic ruin by the policies of Hugo Chávez, who’s such a great hero of Jeremy Corbyn.

We could spend £40 billion extra on the health service if we wanted to over the course of the next parliament by taking £8 billion a year out of the foreign aid budget. Then we would know that it’s being spent on something worth while. So, it’s a choice that we have to make. It’s a binary choice. We can choose to spend money on people in our own country who deserve help, or we can spend the money on people abroad who may not necessarily need the help because the people to whom the foreign aid is going are not the recipients which we intend. So, there is no moral value, actually, in simply giving away other people’s money. The only moral value consists in giving away your own. Therefore, to take on a high moral tone about foreign aid spending, I think, is inappropriate in respect of the use of taxpayers’ money. Yes, you can make a case for foreign aid projects of the humanitarian kind, obviously, to help with crises such as the effects of earthquakes or typhoons or whatever. Nobody would deny the necessity of playing our part in the international community in helping desperate people in desperate situations. But, where we have political decisions taken, climate change policies, for example, which are controversial, and the recipients or the countries who receive these payments are actually going to be doubling, or trebling in the case of India and China, their carbon emissions in the course of the next 30 years, despite the Paris climate accords—they’re given, effectively, an exemption because they’re growing and developing economies—then we’re not even achieving the policy objectives that we think are desirable in the world generally if you believe in man-made climate change. So, there’s a conflict there of policy which cannot be resolved. So, I’m afraid that what my party says is that, in this respect at any rate, charity begins at home, and that’s what we should be fighting this election upon.

Thank you. I have selected the amendment to the motion, and I call on Steffan Lewis to move amendment 1, tabled in the name of Rhun ap Iorwerth.

Amendment 1—Rhun ap Iorwerth

Delete all and replace with:

1. Notes the importance of international aid in alleviating human suffering.

2. Supports Wales’s contribution to humanitarian projects through initiatives such as Wales for Africa.

3. Calls on the Welsh Government to develop and publish a comprehensive international policy for Wales including enhancing the nation’s international aid activities.

Amendment 1 moved.

Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. I move amendment 1 in the name of Rhun ap Iorwerth. International aid makes a difference. It alleviates human suffering when humanitarian crisis strikes. It saves lives and strengthens communities. By working together, for example, we have halved extreme poverty in the last 40 years, and have halved child mortality since 1990. In developing countries, 91 per cent of children are now enrolled in primary school. Between 2000 and 2014, over 6.2 million malaria deaths were averted, primarily saving the lives—primarily saving the lives—of children under 5. And we can be extremely proud of Wales’s record. Our budget and the extent of our powers may be limited, as usual, and compared to the work undertaken at a UK level by the Department for International Development, but the work done by organisations and individuals to build links with those who need our help around the world shows remarkable generosity and great success. The Wales for Africa project has been running for the last 10 years and during that time has done incredible work with partners across Africa. Each health board in Wales has active links with Africa, helping to train doctors, nurses and midwives to deliver healthcare in their communities and, in turn, developing the skills of workers in the Welsh NHS too.

To take an example from the south-east, Midwives@Africa based in Abergavenny deliver effective, evidenced-based training courses to midwife tutors and midwives in southern Ethiopia. It is a partnership that helps both sides—it’s reciprocal—with health workers in Ethiopia receiving vital training, and the Welsh midwives involved developing their teaching, communication and leadership skills. They’re a credit to our nation and to Ethiopia too.

The next few years will see a fundamental change and reshaping of Wales’s relationship with the rest of the world, of course, as a result of our withdrawal from the European Union, and the rhetoric currently coming from some parts of the political establishment is worryingly adversarial. When the Prime Minister uses language that attacks our closest friends and neighbours, she risks damaging our nation’s standing on the global stage not just in terms of international aid, but in other matters too, and I don’t want to see Wales’s name tarnished at the same time. In that context, Dirprwy Lywydd, it is more important than ever that Wales has its own global brand, that we continue to be an outward-looking nation, to build links around the world, and we cannot let the growing narrow nationalism in parts of British politics diminish our global profile. We need a dedicated international policy for Wales, and it should include a commitment to international aid as well. I am of the firm view that this country requires a designated Cabinet Secretary for external affairs within the Welsh Government to lead that strategy, and I am at a loss to understand why this Government, yet again, refuses to do so.

It should also include in that international policy our intentions on how we wish to build on development links, and we can look to other countries in these islands, even. We can look to Scotland and see how an ambitious humanitarian aid strategy has been effective, even with the constraints they have there. Their £9 million development fund is predicated on a vision of Scotland as a good global citizen as part of a wider international strategy tied to trade and education exchanges as well. So, as we strive to enhance Wales’s standing on the global stage, I hope that international development forms an integral part of that strategy in the future, as it has done in recent years.

While I agree that it is our duty to help those facing disease, war or famine, the sad fact remains that much of the foreign aid budget is spent inappropriately. And we are not talking about trivial amounts of money here, as we spend £30 million a day on foreign aid, and only about 16 per cent of this budget is used as humanitarian aid or crisis relief. Diane Abbot MP says, what has given me great concern recently is the emergence of so called “Lords of Poverty”. These are management consultants who are taking enormous salaries from the DFID (Department for International Development) budget in their role as management consultants.’

The UK target is to spend 0.7 per cent of gross national income on foreign aid, and, at the end of 2013, civil servants went on a £1 billion spending spree in order to hit this target. No person should be rushed to spend taxpayers’ money in order to meet a target. There has been much criticism over the way in which foreign aid money is spent, particularly at a time when we in Wales are facing a crisis in health and social care. As a result of austerity, our public services are struggling. Since 2010, spending across many Government departments has fallen by over a quarter. At a time when we should be investing in our health service in order to meet challenges, we see budgets frozen. In contrast—

Will you take an intervention?

No, I’m sorry, because I’ll be taking the four minutes in talking.

In contrast, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the amount of money the UK spends on international development will increase by a further £1 billion a year over the next four years, and that will bring the budget to nearly £15 billion a year, almost as much as the entire Welsh budget.

The UK’s foreign aid approach needs a complete overhaul, and the British taxpayer is entitled to know where the money is being spent. As our national debt continues to skyrocket, how can we justify an aid programme that gives millions of pounds to nations with nuclear and space programmes, when our citizens are living in poverty? My region, Aberavon, is one of the poorest areas, and even whilst walking in the town there are several homeless people lying in the doorways, and this is shameful. So, how can we justify an aid programme that seeks to improve the energy efficiency of Brazilian industry when Welsh taxpayers are struggling to heat their homes? We need a root-and-branch reform of overseas aid that starts with dropping arbitrary targets of spending against national gross income. All this target has done is increase the budget, forcing DFID civil servants to entertain increasingly bizarre ways of spending British taxpayers’ money. Our nation is struggling, and our citizens deserve consideration.

However, we have evidence of moneys being well spent abroad in response to Africa, where we combated Ebola in Sierra Leona and Liberia. The UK Government committed £427 million of direct support to help contain, control, treat and ultimately defeat Ebola. UK direct support included deployment of medical experts from the NHS and the military, which supplied treatment centres—1,400 beds for treatment, including isolation beds, to combat the disease. There were also six Ebola treatment centres across the country built, training teams to train front-line workers. Four thousand healthcare workers were taught logistics and how to be hygienists in the medical profession, which included the Sierra Leone army and prison staff. People were also taught in teams across the country how to bury the dead safely. There were emergency supplies such as food and chlorine, and scientific research was carried out by building laboratories to understand how Ebola had spread. The operation was co-ordinated by the military. The operation worked because the Government and the countries were not simply handed money and told to get on with it. The people had great pride from learning and were left with a legacy of trained clinicians, healthcare centres, and scientific support and research. The people had pride in learning, and the British taxpayer could see tangible proof and evidence of where that money had been spent. And while the people of Britain are generous, accountability and transparency of taxpayers’ money is of paramount importance.

I’m very proud that Labour is committed to spending 0.7 per cent of our gross national income on international development. In 2013, the UK was the first G7 country to meet its UN spending target, and Labour committed to the 0.7 per cent spending on overseas aid both in its 2015 general election manifesto, and in our manifesto published yesterday. That commitment to 0.7 per cent—I think it’s important to tell the Members that are speaking that it’s a UN target; that is what the UN wants countries to spend.

I’m very grateful to the Member for taking the intervention. Will you acknowledge that that commitment was a commitment that was first made by a Conservative Prime Minister, David Cameron? Because, like you, I’m very proud of what has been achieved, and I know that the Labour Party has supported that ambition.

This is something that the Conservative Government has supported, and I’m glad we agree on that issue. I wish all the parties in this Senedd agreed.

Our manifesto yesterday said that we pledge to develop a targeted development agenda, based on the principles of redistribution, social justice, women’s rights and poverty reduction. And, in fact, the last Labour Government in the UK did earn Britain recognition as a world leader in the field of international development by setting up the dedicated Department for International Development. I think it’s very important to say that that international development department is scrutinised very carefully. It is scrutinised by the International Development Committee in the House of Commons, it’s scrutinised by the National Audit Office and it is scrutinised by the Independent Commission for Aid Impact. It is heavily scrutinised. The doubts and queries that come up about international aid are whipped up by the right-wing press, which has been referred to today, and I think we don’t need to take our thinking on this subject from papers like the ‘Daily Mail’ and ‘The Mail on Sunday’, who would be only too happy for us to spend 100 per cent of our money on ourselves and not thinking in any way about the fact that we are global citizens and we live in a global world.

I believe that everyone in every country has a right to clean water, enough food, basic healthcare and an education, and we have a commitment to ensure these human rights should become a reality for the world’s poor and the victims of tyranny and conflict. And of course, it is in our interest to promote this too, because where there’s poverty and lack of education, there’s much more likely to be political instability, conflict and forced migration. You’ve only got to look at what’s happened in the European migrant crisis to see this. No-one leaves their country if it’s a stable place to live in with enough food, with healthcare provision and a chance for an education, so it is in our interests to ensure that we make the world as stable a place as we can, and I believe that aid plays a major role in doing that. Think about what we’ve achieved. The UK is committed to global polio eradication and is the third largest donor to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. There are now only three countries in the world where polio is endemic: Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That is largely due to the aid that we have given.

During my time in Westminster, I was fortunate to visit a project in Africa that had benefitted from international aid from DFID, the international development department, in particular looking at the joint treatment of TB and HIV in Kenya, Rwanda and Malawi. Having seen first hand, as I know others in this Chamber have, the degree of poverty that was experienced by people in those countries, in particular the women and children, it absolutely reinforces my commitment that Wales and the UK should be an outward-looking country where we recognise our international obligations and operate in a generous spirit. I am distressed that there is a party within this Assembly that does not support an outward-looking—who are not generous in their thoughts and think that we must do all we can as united together to try to improve things for the people of the world. Because as far as I’m concerned, and I think most of us in this Chamber are concerned, the children in the world—the children internationally are all our children.

Can I say I was greatly moved—I was still at school, actually—when the Brandt commission reported? I know this will not recommend it any further to a certain party but, of course, Edward Heath was one of its prime members. It established the 0.7 per cent target of GNP that should be devoted to international aid. As part of that report, it also emphasised, to respond directly to Neil Hamilton, that it wasn’t aid that was the most important thing—though it was a vital thing in transforming people’s lives in the poorest countries—but it was trade that was at the heart of a more just international order. That had a big effect in the 1980s in the GATT rounds, which first broke through, really, the old protectionist systems that had largely held force since the second world war. That itself then led on to the World Trade Organization, which has opened up and transformed international trading, and that’s why the Christian Aid figures that Steffan quoted earlier about massive reductions in world poverty—. When you look at absolute poverty, the reductions are even more astonishing. I know that UKIP, to be fair, are very consistent on this. They deplore what’s happened in terms of the global economy, as well, but it has liberated hundreds of millions of people, because we have a more effective trading system now, internationally. So, it’s trade and aid—that’s what leads to a just international society.

I have to say, Deputy Presiding Officer, that, in the early 1990s, I was responsible for UNICEF’s education work in Wales, and, as part of that, I did visit some projects. I remember the technical assistance I saw in Brazil that was given to street children, particularly in Fortaleza, one of the poorer cities in Brazil then, as now—very close to the equator. I saw a street children project there where the children were helped by UNICEF to run a communal living arrangement, and then the children went out and performed a street circus. Fortaleza is very popular with North American tourists, and these children earned a decent living. Now, if they hadn’t earned a decent and legal living, they were vulnerable to vigilante gangs coming along and murdering them, and it was very important, in particular, that the adolescent children could show society that they were in productive employment. Because, you may give money—and Neil has talked about giving your own money and I’m sure that many people in this Chamber do that and keep that a private thing—to a street child of five or six years of age on a street corner, but let me tell you, you’re less likely to give a 14-year-old or 15-year-old youth on the corner, but perhaps in equal poverty, that assistance. So, the technical assistance I saw was just remarkable.

I also saw a project in Thailand that helped sex workers, and the liberation that that brought them was deeply moving. There was a conference attached to the work that we were viewing there and I was given a briefcase for the conference with a beautiful textile pattern on the front of it, and I used that briefcase for many years when I was first elected to the Assembly. It was very distinctive and I was very proud to tell people when they asked, ‘Where did you get that case?’ So, I think it’s very important that we set this in context.

I am proud that a British Government with cross-party support, if not all-party support, has implemented the 0.7 per cent target. It is something that we should be very, very proud of and that we want to see. We are a leader and other countries are following our example, albeit too slowly.

In the last five or six years, the Department for International Development budget has led to 69.5 million people gaining access to financial services to help them work their way out of poverty. That’s things like microloans to women in Bangladesh. You know, it’s not all about giving immediate aid; it’s about investing in the future: 11.3 million children are in primary and lower secondary schools, nearly half of them girls, because of our budget; we have helped support nearly 400,000 teachers; since 2010, over 67 million children have been immunised because of our people’s money, if I could put it that way, through Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. Many of those children would not be alive today if that assistance had not been given. We stand proud of what we’ve achieved and we want to go further.

I think Julie Morgan made reference to the audit procedures. They’re even more robust than Julie had time, actually, to indicate. In the last audit, 0.3 per cent of DFID spending was reported as lost to fraud, of which two thirds was then recovered. So, we lost in the budget 0.01 per cent, and I think that’s what we’ve got to remember—that we have rigorous procedures.

Can I conclude, Deputy Presiding Officer? Britain has been part of the solution in this area. Let’s now not become part of the problem. Reject this shabby motion.

In 1964, a Labour Government under Harold Wilson was elected. It was a Government that immediately made departmental changes with five new Government ministries being set up. One of them, interestingly, was the Welsh Office. Another more pertinent to today’s debate was the Ministry of Overseas Development, headed by Barbara Castle. That was perhaps the start of the overseas aid industry. Now, in 2015, another newspaper—not the ‘Daily Mail’; it may not be any more well regarded by the people to the right of me, but it’s ‘The Times’—began a series of investigative pieces covering the subject of overseas aid. That newspaper has continued to closely monitor this sector since then. When ‘The Times’ began to explore this issue, the newspaper received an interesting letter from Gordon Bridger. He was the director of economics at the Ministry of Overseas Development when it was set up in 1964. Gordon Bridger pointed out that there were different types of overseas aid, one of which is budgetary aid. This is aid given directly by one Government to another Government, and this is what Gordon Bridger had to say about budgetary aid—by the way he was referring to a recent piece that had appeared in a newspaper in which it was alleged that British aid was bankrolling a legion of Ghanaian civil servants who didn’t actually exist.

Now, Gordon Bridger said: ‘The massive misuse of European and British budgetary aid in Ghana recently reported is no surprise, since almost all UK financial aid now takes that form. The Department for International Development is now giving almost £300 million a year to Ethiopia, and many millions to Nigeria, Pakistan, Kenya and numerous others. It is impossible, indeed dangerous, to audit budgetary aid. An assassination attempt on Malawi’s former budget director occurred last year after he planned to reveal Government corruption. There have also been huge scandals over the way the way the Governments of Uganda, Mozambique, Kenya, Rwanda and Nepal have misused this type of aid, and if anyone thinks that the £268 million going to Pakistan reaches poor people, they must be very naive. The DfID is being taken to court over claims about misuse of aid in Ethiopia, and it has been condemned by Amnesty International. Barbara Castle, who in 1964 was put in charge of the newly formed Ministry of Overseas Development, for which I worked as director of economics, instructed us to phase out budgetary aid as it undermined local effort, got diverted and was impossible to audit—[Interruption.] Certainly.

UK Government has phased out direct aid to Governments. It doesn’t happen anymore. We give aid to international partners like UNICEF, to organisations, to British charities that are working there, and to co-operatives and the like of other community bodies in these countries. We do not give money to foreign Governments as aid.

Do you also agree with the spending on consultants, though, which has doubled to more than £1 billion a year since 2012—[Interruption]—benefits experts, right. Benefitting many expert companies in accountancy, like PricewaterhouseCoopers, who are not particularly known for their ethical practices, but if you want to carry on giving these—[Interruption].

Simon Thomas.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I think in 10 years that I have worked in some shape of form around this Assembly, I haven’t seen a motion that made my skin crawl more than the one before us today. I don’t say that the purpose or amount of overseas aid is not a subject for considered and well-argued debate—it clearly is. But not even the fig leaf worn by Neil Hamilton to hide his modesty on the pages of ‘GQ’ magazine could hide the shameless way that UKIP are trying to take an issue not related to Assembly powers, barely tangentially related to our representative role as AMs, in order to feed right-wing red meat to their few remaining supporters.

This motion is misleading and inaccurate and I will demonstrate why. It refers to an arbitrary gross domestic product target of 0.7 per cent for overseas aid. There’s nothing arbitrary about it, as David Melding has just pointed out—it has a long and thoroughly worked out international history. Indeed, it’s such a recognised target that Neil Hamilton stood for election on a manifesto commitment to this target, because the 1997 Conservative manifesto said this:

We will continue to maintain a significant bilateral and multilateral aid programme reflecting the aspiration of meeting the UN’s target of 0.7% of GDP for aid as a long-term objective.’

So, Neil Hamilton stood for election on such a manifesto. He’s even—[Interruption] No, you’ve had your bile. You’ve had your opportunity to give your bile to this place. He’s even partly responsible for the fact that we have this 0.7 per cent, because after my old colleague Martin Bell defeated him in Tatton, the Conservatives of Tatton had to find a clean skin, and the clean skin they found was one George Osborne who then, when he was Chancellor in 2013, exactly introduced this commitment of 0.7 per cent, so Neil Hamilton is doubly to blame for the situation we’re in.

The next part of the motion complains about the UK national debt of £1.6 trillion. Well, again, who’s responsible for that UK debt? The long-term economic plan supported by the Conservatives, supported by, sadly, the Liberal Democrats, but also supported by Messrs Reckless and Carswell, who always consistently voted for the budget process that has led to us having a £1.6 trillion national debt. I’m delighted to see Mark Reckless in this place. I thought the submarine strategy of the Conservative group wasn’t going to let him up to breathe anymore, but he has met us with—

Mark Reckless rose—

I won’t give way; I have too much to say, I’m sorry. I’m simply delighted to see him. We are then told about how much is wasted or diverted by corruption. Well, if you call 0.01 per cent, as David Melding has just pointed out, being wasted, then your maths bears too much similarity to that of Diane Abbott’s for my comfort, I have to say. But this corruption thing is interesting, isn’t it? What’s this corruption thing? Do UKIP have in mind HSBC paying US regulators nearly $2 billion in fines due to drug money laundering, or the £30 million settlement paid by BAE Systems to the Serious Fraud Office, over the Al-Yamamah jet deal with Saudi Arabia? I don’t think they do.

Let’s see how the proposer of the motion spent his time as a Member of Parliament. He worked for a lobbying company called Strategy Network International, linked to mining firms in apartheid South Africa, which campaigned to lift sanctions and paid for Tory MPs to visit South Africa. It took the cash-for-questions inquiry to reveal he had never declared this consultancy to the House of Commons. As an MP—

Neil Hamilton rose—

No, I’m not. You’ve had your chance. No. [Interruption.] Yes, well the truth is in the cash-for-questions inquiry, and everyone can read it. As an MP, I revealed that the BAE Systems had paid millions of pounds in secret commissions to sell Hawk jets to South Africa. I think both of us appeared on the front page of ‘The Guardian’ for our inquiries as Members of Parliament, but I know I’m prouder of what I did than what he did; I think I did it for the right reasons. I also think that I was talking about the sort of corruption that we should be concerned about today, and not the straw-men arguments that the Member has advanced.

Now, after the electors of Tatton came to the same conclusion as the voters of Carmarthen East and Dinefwr will soon come to, the Member spoke at the apartheid-supporting Springbok Club in 1998. The official notes to that meeting, written by a former National Front member, state:

Mr. Hamilton gave a riveting keynote speech, in which he recalled his own fond memories of South Africa during the era of civilised rule. He also expressed great pleasure at seeing the true South African flag proudly on display…and expressed the hope that one day it would be seen flying in Cape Town and Pretoria once again.’

That was the apartheid era flag, of course. Now, we also know that Mr Hamilton was active in the Young Conservatives when they merrily sold and wore ‘Hang Nelson Mandela’ T-shirts. The only reasonable conclusion we can draw—[Interruption.] The only reasonable conclusion we can draw is that this motion’s pious posturing, its pretence to be concerned about the burden of aid on the working people of Wales, really should read: ‘Black lives matter less’. What UKIP really hanker after is the time when colonials did what they were told, and stopped being uppity.

Well, if there’s any bile in this Chamber, it’s just come from the gentleman who just sat down in his appalling personal attacks on other AMs in this Chamber. Absolutely disgraceful. [Interruption.] Absolutely disgraceful.

Of the £250 million in aid we sent to Ethiopia last year, only a tiny proportion went to wealth creation. In other words, we’re not helping these countries to become self-sufficient, but rather tying them into a never-ending spiral of dependency on foreign aid. Our great efforts in providing better health, education and sanitation has caused a population explosion, doubling in Ethiopia from 74 million in 1990, to 134 million today. The tragedy is: almost all of them will have very little quality of life.

Will you take an intervention?

Yes, of course I will.

I’m pleased that you managed to take an intervention; I couldn’t bear to hear you much more. But I would like to invite you to meet the midwives from Betsi Cadwaladr University Local Health Board who volunteer in Lesotho. I would like to invite all the UKIP Members who speak here today to also visit Lampeter’s Community Carbon Link, helping to plant 0.5 million trees in Kenya, or the Tools for Self Reliance in Crickhowell, who have worked in Tanzania for 20 years. It would be actually more beneficial to you, as Members of this Welsh Assembly, if you actually spoke to the people from Wales and got a reality check about what’s happening on the ground instead of what you’re about to—

Thank you. Yes, yes, you’re talking about a tiny, tiny percentage of the population. That’s all you’re talking about—a tiny percentage of those people—[Interruption.] They will almost certainly live in abject poverty, with no prospect of meaningful work. It is not enough for us to save them from starvation; we have to give them hope and a possibility of them improving their lives in a sustainable way. Whatever aid we give must be targeted to help them create wealth. The more wealthy a nation becomes, the fewer the number of children who are born to each family, giving each and every child a much greater prospect of having a happy, fulfilling life. Britain’s current scattergun approach to foreign aid does not help eradicate poverty, it perpetuates it. By using a more defined and targeted approach to aid, we’ll be able to provide much-needed assistance and reduce the foreign aid budget. Our aim should be to drive down the need for aid—

Will you take an intervention?

[Continues.]—not continually expand its budget. No, thank you.

I find it quite appalling that many Members in this Chamber are quite happy to see the working classes of this country have their pockets picked in order to keep despots in power—[Interruption.]—such people as Mugabe et cetera, that you’re happy that huge amounts of money are wasted simply so that you can salve your own consciences and say, ‘We give 0.07 per cent of our GDP’. [Interruption.] It’s salving your consciences. [Interruption.] It doesn’t actually achieve anything as to what is needed. Thank you.

I have two other speakers. [Interruption.] I have two other speakers who wish to speak in this debate. If they will assure me they will not take the full five minutes, I can get them both in. They’re both two of my colleagues on the Labour benches, so I plead with you, if I call you, can you not take these full five minutes, and then we can get you all in? John Griffiths.

Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. I think at the root of this debate today is the fact that all of us here live in a secure, stable and prosperous part of the world, but as we all know, and as we’ve heard already, and as the briefings from Oxfam Cymru, Save the Children and the Red Cross provided for this debate show with their tragic statistics, very many people in the world are not in that fortunate position and live with death as a daily reality—unnecessary death and suffering, poor sanitation, poor health standards, lack of educational opportunity, and lack of economic opportunity. And also, of course, great war and turmoil. So, we are very fortunate, and that does give us a moral responsibility to help people in that dire need.

I’m very proud, actually, Dirprwy Lywydd, that our Welsh Government has taken forward the programme for Africa, recognising our moral responsibility. I was very fortunate to go to Mbale in Uganda and see at first-hand the children, the women, the families that have benefited from the work—the health work, the educational work, the economic development and environmental work—that Welsh people are doing in partnership with people in Mbale, and it’s very heart-warming, when you walk around the orphanages, and you see at first-hand how much it matters to people, and I applaud that work.

I also very much applaud the last UK Labour Government for setting up the Department for International Development, for tripling the aid budget, and I very much applaud the UK Conservative Government for meeting the 0.7 per cent target. That is absolutely fantastic to see, when you look at the need around the world. In terms of the displacement and the mass movement of people across the world that that displacement of over 60 million people creates, with the war and turmoil behind it, and economic migration coming from impoverishment, we know that that not only creates those very obvious problems for the countries directly affected, but for the whole world, because mass movement of people does create issues and difficulties for everyone. Obviously, as has been said already, if we build up the economies of countries that are currently impoverished, then they are strong future trading partners. So, there is a direct benefit for us in the so-called developed world if we help the so-called developing world.

So, I think that is the true background to this debate today, Dirprwy Lywydd, which has, I think, seen some very strong statements. I join people in being absolutely appalled that UKIP has brought this motion to the Assembly today. I think it does reveal UKIP in its true light, and it will be very interesting to see what people outside this Chamber and organisations involved in the field of international development make of this debate and the contributions to it.

Can I just say in closing, Dirprwy Lywydd, that I completely and fundamentally oppose this UKIP motion and the values, attitudes and politics that lie behind it? I believe, as I think the vast majority here today do, in internationalism, in equality and fairness, in Wales, the UK and the world. Thank goodness that Welsh Government and UK Government recognise their international obligations and are sufficiently principled and courageous to put them into practice to save lives and to improve life in those places, those parts of the world, in greatest need.

Thank you very much. Finally, Joyce Watson.

Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. I promise not to take my full five minutes.

I want to start first of all by saying that I’ve been in this Chamber for 10 years, and I have never heard the like of what I heard in this Chamber being espoused, like we’ve heard this afternoon from the UKIP benches. It actually would serve them well, I think, to go and visit, collectively, the Wales PEN Cymru project that has given a voice to refugees at events on the Llyn peninsula; Sector 39 from Powys, sharing their expertise in permaculture with partners in Uganda and Kenya; Dolen Ffermio in Powys; Märit Olsson and Get Set Wales, both in Machynlleth—[Interruption.] No; I’ve heard enough from you. And also, more crucially and importantly, for the mover and opener of this debate to go to Coleg Sir Gâr to meet the students from Carmarthenshire who’ve been involved in the Care for Uganda project, whose lives were changed—and I’ve spoken, by the way, to those young people whose lives were changed, who helped to build a hospital there, and who came back better people.

If we’d had this movement that they would like today in the name of UKIP to abandon everybody, not only would the people who really need the help be denied it, but those people who actually benefit from delivering it would also be denied opportunities. So, I suggest to the UKIP Members that it would be a very good lesson for them indeed if they actually did take any time whatsoever to educate themselves about what it actually means to help and support people, instead of coming here and quoting from things like the ‘Daily Mail’ or ‘The Times’ and actually choosing selective little bits and pieces of information. I know that they called themselves the guard dogs of Brexit, and I know that they are actually looking for a way forward, but let me just tell you, by behaving here this afternoon like rabid dogs, it isn’t going to help your cause.

Thank you very much and I now call on the leader of the house, Jane Hutt.

Dirprwy Lywydd, I am glad to be able to respond to this debate this afternoon. Members have said this and I do believe this debate has exposed a very wide political divide in this Chamber, one that I have not witnessed before in 18 years of this Assembly. It is a divide, and it’s a divide that we have debated this afternoon; it is a divide and a fundamental difference in those values and principles that underpin our political commitments, priorities and motivations.

And of course, in responding to this debate, we have to look at what our political principles and priorities are and how we handle that, particularly as a Welsh Labour Government having to also manage the challenges that we have in terms of ongoing austerity, looking to ways in which we can not only progress in terms of investing in health and social care, housing and education, making difficult choices, looking to how we can serve the people of Wales, but we believe also very clearly in playing our part, playing the part we must play as global citizens and in supporting the wider world.

We support our spending on aid because it’s the right thing to do morally, and the right thing to do if we want a safer world in which everyone has a chance to prosper. We will vote against the UKIP motion and support the Plaid Cymru amendment, recognising the importance of international aid and the importance of the Wales for Africa programme, which has been spoken of and Steffan Lewis highlighted today. We must recognise, of course, that international aid is not devolved to Wales—it’s the responsibility of the UK Government—but this debate does provide us with the opportunity to report on that successful Wales for Africa programme and to look at ways in which we can meet those obligations, as John Griffiths described as being very clearly on an international basis.

Can I say that the Conservative group will also support the Plaid Cymru amendment because we do think that we need to have a unified expression, at least for the other parties? We interpret the call for a comprehensive international policy as one working through British institutions like the foreign office and the British Council, just in case people think that we’ve run away with Plaid Cymru’s perhaps greater vision of independence that they may have.

Thank you, David Melding, for drawing attention to the Brandt report in your contribution, which recommended the 0.7 per cent target. Thank you again for reminding us in terms of the robust and rigorous auditing and monitoring, that 0.01 per cent is minute in terms of the ways in which we deliver and indeed the UK Government delivers its international aid programme.

I do want to set out again a few facts on international aid. The UK is just one of eight countries in the world to meet the official development assistance spending target of 0.7 per cent of gross national income. Less than 2p in every £1 spent by Government goes on foreign aid. Africa receives the largest proportion of UK aid. Humanitarian aid is the single biggest area of spend, accounting for one sixth of total bilateral aid. A significant proportion of UK humanitarian aid was spent in Sierra Leone to help with the Ebola crisis, as well as in Syria, Yemen and South Sudan.

The UK’s aid spending plays an important economic and diplomatic role, a role that becomes all the more important after we leave the European Union. By providing aid to countries to support their ongoing development and growth, it helps to increase the wealth of their population. Aid has a role to play in ensuring and establishing international security. As Julie Morgan said, our party, the Labour Party, supports the 0.7 per cent target. An incoming Labour Government would continue to spend 0.7 per cent of gross national income on ODA. Of course, we recognise the fact that David Cameron brought this in in terms of clear Government priority and policy. And although, of course, responsibility for international development lies with the UK Department for International Development, there has been a demand—Steffan Lewis made this point—for an identifiably Welsh response to international development.

For more than a decade now, we’ve had strong and reciprocal relationships with countries throughout sub-Saharan Africa. The Welsh Government has supported and encouraged hundreds and thousands of people to get involved with links and projects though our Wales for Africa programme. I declare an interest as a trustee of the charity Vale For Africa, which works in partnership with a Ugandan NGO, inspiring and empowering people and organisations in the Tororo district with people and partners in the Vale of Glamorgan. The Wales for Africa programme is very special; principles of partnership underpinning the work, based on mutual respect and mutual benefit. Every single project supported by the programme has benefited Wales as much as it’s benefiting its African partner. That’s through health and community links; fair trade groups; diaspora; through professional development opportunities; making a profound difference to the lives of those in Wales and Africa. There’s no doubt that, as a country, Wales, we are far better off as a result of this programme in so many ways, and the achievements have far outstripped its modest budget and we’re justifiably proud of its success. Let’s just look at some of those achievements: 500 unique Welsh projects across 25 African countries; in 2015 alone, 80,000 people in Wales and 260,000 people in Africa benefiting from our small grants scheme. Every health board in Wales has at least one active link with a hospital in Africa. We planted a staggering 5.5 million trees in a highly deforested area in Mbale, which John visited, in Uganda, as part of the 10 million trees project. This is helping to improve the lives of more than 544,000 Ugandan farmers, offsetting the harmful effects of climate change. We are supporting more than 160 placements through our international learning opportunities programme, and sharing more than 47,000 hours of expertise with African partners.

So, Deputy Llywydd, as a Government, we’ve been clear that we want to be an outward- looking nation, open to good ideas, and engaged with the rest of the world. I believe that’s what the Welsh people want too: care and compassion for their neighbours here and across the world. We’ve had many representations of concern and evidence of how important international aid is here in Wales and to the world. From the British Red Cross, Save the Children and Oxfam, you’ve all had their representations in their evidence today. Carol Wardman, from Church in Wales, aptly reminded us that the parable of the good Samaritan, given in response to precisely the question of, ‘Who is my neighbour?’, specifically demonstrates that our neighbours are those in the greatest need, particularly when they are not from our own tribe, nationality or religion.

So, I spoke at the start of my response about the divide here today: a divide that UKIP has brought to this place. UKIP has tabled this motion to promote a mean-spirited election pledge, but fortunately, support for UKIP seems to be ebbing away. That’s why we will continue to play our part as global citizens, be an outward-looking country, ready and willing to forge new relationships, and to reach out the hand of help to those who need it, and restate our political and moral purpose here today. So, let’s oppose this ‘shabby motion’, as David Melding said, and which Simon Thomas says, ‘Makes our skin creep.’

Thank you. I call on Neil Hamilton to reply to the debate.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. We seem to have hit a target here, from the reaction of other Members. We’ve interrupted the cosy consensus that existed before we arrived. That’s what a democratic Assembly is for. I thank those who took part in the debate: Steffan Lewis, Julie Morgan, David Melding, Caroline Jones, Gareth Bennett, David Rowlands, John Griffiths and Joyce Watson. I have no thanks, of course, for Simon Thomas, for making his vile, crude, intemperate, personally abusive and misrepresentative speech, dredging up from the depths of the internet some of the lies and libels that have been told about me by his political confederates, no doubt, previously. But I don’t intend to dip my toes in the sump of his speech. I’ll leave him to wallow in his own filth quite happily.

But, in order to respond to the rest of the debate, I will just say I don’t think that honourable Members can have been listening to the way that I opened my speech, or can have read the motion. Because the many examples of good aid that have been mentioned in the course of the debate today—and some of which were mentioned in the speech, certainly, of Caroline Jones—would receive almost universal acclaim and, certainly, are supported by UKIP.

I started my speech by saying that only 16 per cent of the aid budget goes on projects of that kind; 84 per cent goes on long-term strategic political goal type of aid of the kinds that I mentioned in climate change, et cetera, et cetera. It’s this kind of Government-to-Government aid or Government-through international-agency aid, as David Melding would’ve put it, that ought to be questioned. Now, the 0.7 per cent of GDP figure is an arbitrary one; it doesn’t have any objective justification at all. It can’t have; it’s a subjective figure—it could be 0.6, it could be 1.6, it could be 10.6. And so the opportunity for virtue signalling—which has been seized by many Members around the Chamber today to advertise what they see as their moral superiority over us on these benches—in how to spend other people’s money is something that is not a question of principle, but only a question of degree. Because it only starts to be morally advantageous when it starts to hurt, and I don’t know whether the amount that individual Members contribute from their own resources every year to—[Interruption.] I don’t when—[Interruption.] Yes, plenty. No doubt the education Secretary, who lives a very comfortable life indeed—. I don’t think it makes a great deal of impact upon her lifestyle whatever she gives in charity to other causes. I’m not making any—[Interruption.] I’m not making any personal remark; I’m responding—[Interruption.] I’m responding—[Interruption.] I’m responding to the implicit—[Interruption.] I’m responding to the implicit argument in that—

Are you taking an intervention?

Will you take an intervention?

Yes.

I just wonder whether you’ll recognise that, actually, some of the most generous people in Wales are those from the most impoverished backgrounds.

Yes, of course. Of course I do.

Those people tend to be the ones who give the most, because they’ve often had a helping hand themselves in the past. Will you accept that?

Yes, of course I do. Of course I do. What you do with your own money is at the heart of the issue. And what I’m saying is that when the Government gives away taxpayers’ money no question of morality can arise, because it is somebody giving away other people’s money. There is no element of morality involved in that. So, the point of this debate is—[Interruption.] The point of this debate—[Interruption.] The point, if I may finish my remarks—. The point of this debate is simply to advertise the fact that a great deal of the money that is spent on overseas aid is spent on questionable projects, debateable projects, which don’t necessarily lead to the relief of poverty, the eradication of disease, the improvement of water facilities, et cetera, et cetera—all those things we can universally approve. Sending dance troupes to Ethiopia perhaps is not something of which we can approve—£5 million or whatever the figure was that was spent on that from the budget in 2013. I deliberately didn’t give colourful examples of that kind from the archives of the ‘The Daily Mail’—something to which I referred as an ironical remark in my speech earlier on—because I didn’t want to trivialise the debate or allow it to be trivialised.

But there is a serious point at issue here. We can choose to spend the money that we take from taxpayers in any number of different ways. We know that the health service is underfunded everywhere. It’s bound to be, given the nature of its construction and infinite demands that are placed upon it. We can choose to increase the aid budget by another £10 billion and take it away from some other budget. Well, if so, what is that other budget? Is that an example of moral superiority on the part of those who’ve taken the opposite side of the argument to us today? You know, there are plenty of things: what about the arts council and things like that? They are all virtuous things in themselves, but is it better to fund a theatre or a symphony orchestra than to relieve real poverty and eradicate disease? These are difficult questions and difficult choices that we all have to make.

But to take the view of the smug, superior, condescending approach that we’ve heard this afternoon I think demeans the debate. To think that out in the country, at large, a very small proportion of people would support the UKIP motion today I think is to fool yourselves. If you had some kind of a referendum on overseas aid then that would produce a very different result indeed—[Interruption.] And I see now that Members are not quite so keen on asking the people what they think about what we do with our money in that way. So—

Are you winding up?

[Continues.]—I think I’ve reached the end of my speech for today, and I commend our motion to the house.

Thank you. The proposal is to agree the motion without amendment. Does any Members object? [Objection.] Therefore, we defer this voting until voting time.

Voting deferred until voting time.

Unless three Members wish for the bell to be rung, I will proceed directly to voting time.