Can rhetoric match reality? Britain’s international development future

Bronwen Maddox

Good morning, everyone. A very warm welcome to Chatham House. I’m Bronwen Maddox, the Director. I’m delighted to be welcoming you to this talk on Can Rhetoric Match Reality: Britain’s International Development Future, where Andrew Mitchell, Minister for Development at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office is going to be giving a keynote speech setting out his plans. Just a few housekeeping things. This is on the record and being recorded, and please feel free to follow and tweet along with #CHEvents or @ChathamHouse.

Andrew Mitchell, as you know, was appointed Minister of State in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office last October, was previously Secretary of State for International Development from May 2010 to September 2012, and has written and spoken extensively in Parliament and elsewhere about development. And we’re extremely pleased to have him here for this speech on UK vision of reducing poverty and tacking – tackling climate change. Andrew Mitchell, very warm welcome [applause].

Andrew Mitchell MP

Thank you, Bronwen, and good morning, everybody. I am conscious that I’m talking in the heat of a massive crisis in Sudan. Clearly, our thoughts are with British nationals being evacuated and the brave servicemen and women risking their lives to secure safe passage back to the UK, and our thoughts are with the 45 million people in Sudan who are bearing the brunt of suffering. It is essential that the ceasefire is maintained and that a political process is secured. If not, the humanitarian consequences will be incalculable. The UK will continue to work tirelessly to help bring an end to the violence and provide vital humanitarian relief.

Today, in this great centre of learning and scholarship, we assert again our commitment to change the lives of the world’s poorest and drive forward shared prosperity. Today, we commit to persuading more of our fellow citizens that international development is core to our own national interests, as well as the right thing to do. Today, we reaffirm our priorities and show how we can secure these goals through partnership, to achieve progress and prosperity, and we underline Britain’s historic commitment through the international system to those who dwell in the poorest and most challenging of circumstances.

Today, we seek to promote a British policy and priority which is above party politics and which is seared into our national conscience, as people across our country have shown through their generosity and compassion to those suffering in distant places, where for many in their darkest moments after flood, earthquake and disaster, Britain has been a beacon of hope and of light. At a time where the international system is fractured and Russia’s War in Ukraine shows that core international values and rules can be brutally assaulted and overturned, we restate in strong terms our belief in an effective and ambitious rules-based international system essential to address climate change, the existential crisis of our time, as well as the causes of migration and global health insecurity.

A time when crises are everywhere, but leadership is not, when we can save a bank in California in three days, but Zambia waits more than two years for debt relief. When our children can secure mortgage finance for 30 years, but developing countries secure maturities just over five years, and when the Sustainable Development Goals agreed with the rest of the world under David Cameron’s leadership are way off course at this halfway point. We invoke the famous dictum of Douglas Hurd, one of the UK’s most distinguished Foreign Secretaries, that through the international system “Britain can punch above its weight.”

After 30 years of unprecedented poverty reduction, when the benefits of technology and globalisation, supported by aid and development, lifted quality of life around the planet, we have come to the hard stop of COVID and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. With 70 million people falling back into poverty, with millions of girls out of school, with famine stalking the lands of East Africa, with five seasons of failed crops due to drought, where at least 40,000 people have died and where children are starving to death. And this year at the international meetings which I attended just two weeks ago in New York and Washington, I heard clearly the loud voices of the Global South, but not only the South, voices of dismay and distress. That anger is rising as they see a developed world which can invent quantitative easing to find money for themselves but cannot find the money to save the planet.

These are the issues that, collectively, we face. We are called to deliver the SDGs when at halftime, if I may use a football analogy, we are two-nil down. And we must transform international finance to mobilise the trillions of dollars that are needed if we are to deliver on our promises on climate change and secure the future of our planet, a planet which we share, but with vastly unequal resources, where those who have done least to cause the climate crisis are hit first and hit hardest by it. In Niger, where I was recently trying to advance our shared security and economic interests, a country among the poorest and most challenged in the world, they lose each day to climate change the equivalent in arable land of close to 500 football pitches, and in some regions 50% of the girls are married by the age of 15 and pregnant by the age of 17.

And so, just as the world came together at the Millennium to make poverty history and stand by the Millennium Development Goals, so today the Bridgetown Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals call on our generation to shoulder our responsibilities and deliver. We face a complex environment where resources in many wealthy countries are depleted and constrained by domestic priorities, including, frankly, in Britain, where Parliament accepted a temporary reduction in spending below our commitment to allocate 0.7% of our own national income.

I know that these cuts are painful for our partners and yes, they dented the UK’s reputation, but today is about looking forward. The government’s decision to allocate an additional £2.5 billion to the ODA budget to help relieve pressures resulting from Britain’s embrace of those fleeing persecution in Ukraine and Afghanistan, is a clear signal that things are changing, and of course we will return to 0.7 as soon as the fiscal tests are met. But returning to 0.7 is not the whole story, new approaches that reflect the changing world around us will be vital. It is even more important, meanwhile, that we press for creative ways of mobilising new and additional funds to ensure our development objectives are on track. We must redouble our efforts to go beyond aid, to secure the gains and the results our consciences and interests demand with all the resources and tools at our disposal.

I come now to how we will do this, through the changes we are making to reinvigorate Britain’s development leadership, which has been sorely missed by our friends and allies across the world. An international leadership owned by the British people, our universities and thinktanks, and by the British NGOs and charities too, which are at the forefront of all our work. It is this leadership which pledges to work in patient, long-term partnership with people and governments around the world, where engagement comes without coercion, and where tackling the development crisis and the climate crisis are not a choice, but two sides of the same coin that need to be resolved together.

I’ve now been back as the UK’s Development Minister for exactly six months. As set out in the recent Integrated Review, the Prime Minister has thrown his full weight behind our international development work. It is the path set out by our international development strategy on which we must go further and faster. Britain’s development leadership will not be reinvigorated until they can deliver on the promise of a merger. There is a great prize to be grasped here. A merger which is seen as a success for both development and wider foreign policy will avoid, once again in the future, a Development Department being spun out of the Foreign Office with the prolonged period of Whitehall introspection and disruption which inevitably results.

Working together, development and foreign policy are a powerful force. They nurture trust and reciprocity by supporting the ambitions of our partners, development amplifies our diplomatic influence, and by the same token our diplomatic reach helps deliver our Development Goals. Helping others helps us. We need an approach fit for the 21st century which understands that development and geopolitics go hand-in-hand, and that development is long-term, an approach which deploys the full panoply of UK diplomacy and soft power, where development is dynamic and forward-looking, and which readily adapts to the pace and scale of global change. So, change is required to achieve this.

Firstly, we will greatly strengthen the way government addresses all development issues. We will create a second Permanent Under-Secretary within the Foreign Office responsible for ODA. A Cross-Whitehall Committee will be co-chaired by myself, the Development Minister, and the Chief Secretary to the Treasurer, my friend and colleague John Glen. It will focus on both the quality and coherence of ODA spend to ensure that this precious budget is delivering value for money for taxpayers and producing results on the ground.

Second, the Development Minister has returned to the Cabinet table and now also sits on the National Security Council, where defence, diplomacy and development are hardwired together. Of great importance too, the Development Minister will be Governor of the five major multilateral development banks, including The World Bank and the Africa Development Bank. It is within these institutions that critical experience and financial firepower resides. This must be harnessed if the SDGs and climate goals are to be achieved.

Finally, international development leadership cannot solely be delivered by geography. Policy is thematic. We need an answer to the question: how do I interact with the British Government on international development, whether I’m an NGO or an international organisation?

So, today I launch a new brand to recognise the breadth of our work and collaboration, that promises value for money to our taxpayers, reliability to our partners and friends around the world and a commitment to help reach our global goals. UK International Development, UKDev. We will continue to use the UK Aid brand to badge our humanitarian work, and we will continue to do so with sensitivity, especially in conflict zones. But this new brand, UK International Development, will badge the Foreign Office’s work to use a diverse range of partnerships to advance development progress to build widely shared prosperity.

Placing partnership at the heart of the UK’s offer shows that at its core, international development is not about charity, handouts and dependency. It is about listening to our partners and working together to secure shared objectives. So, by these three sets of changes we bring together the direction and grip necessary for Britain to reassert our aspiration for global leadership, and building national and global systems that really work for people and planet. This brand is intended to be bigger than just our Foreign Office programme, and to embrace not just the rest of government, but Britain’s much wider set of civil society actors, and partner with us. Our universities, our scientific establishments, our NGOs and volunteers, together with many private sector actors, it is that totality of effort that makes the new brand. We are bigger than our parts.

I now turn to the seven key priorities for the UK set out in the Integrated Review, which we will drive forward with new determination and vigour. Three of these priorities I will talk about only briefly today. First, we will place ourselves at the centre of the Global Health Agenda, which promotes pandemic preparedness, prevention and response at home and abroad, underlining that no-one is safe until everyone everywhere is safe. Next, we will champion open science for global resilience. Britain is a research and science superpower. And third, we will bear down on money laundering and the flows of dirty money which deprive countries of their legitimate tax receipts and represent money stolen, particularly from Africa and African people.

There is a great cross-party consensus and collaboration on this issue, and I pay tribute to Margaret Hodge and Nigel Mills for leading this work in Parliament. We will change the way we operate to ensure that these vast sums wherever possible are trapped, frozen and returned. This is one of the great examples of how action in the UK can pay dividends for our partners around the world, making ourselves more secure and supporting global development. Globally, the OECD estimates that countries are missing out on between 100 and $240 billion in revenue from multinational tax avoidance. With the right support, it is estimated that lower income countries could raise an additional $260 billion in tax revenue.

The National Crime Agency estimate that hundreds of billions of dollars are laundered through UK and UK-linked corporate structuring each and every year. Global health, open science, dirty money, are essential parts of a wide-ranging and ambitious long-term agenda, but there are four other areas above all where I am today setting out new and greater ambition. First, we confirm that we place the position of girls and women at the forefront of everything we do. It is not possible to understand development unless seen through the eyes of girls and women who bear the brunt of extreme poverty and conflict too often in the most hideous of ways. We will continue to push back on those who seek to challenge the hard-won rights of women and girls at every opportunity.

I am determined that we will continue to champion the rights of all girls to 12 years of quality education and so, we will launch a new public campaign on girls’ education results with easy access to information, which shows the huge difference we are making. I’m also delighted to announce that the UK is launching today an innovative new programme SCALE, which stands for Scaling Access & Learning in Education. This builds on all we have learnt from the Girls’ Education Challenge Fund. We will partner with governments that want to test new approaches, and then scale them up in their national systems. This will lead to an additional six million girls in school over four years, thanks to the British taxpayer.

We have recently allocated £90 million to help children access education in emergencies, and we should never forget that one of these girls may one day discover the cure for cancer. We are determined, through our work on family planning, to enable many more women to decide for themselves when and whether they have children, and through the work championed so fulsomely by my ministerial colleague, Lord Ahmad, to protect women from sexual violence, and through our efforts to lead the development of a global framework for tackling sexual exploitation and abuse and sexual harassment, in development and peacekeeping.

Second, we believe it is the private sector which can help in extraordinary ways to boost the growth of prosperity in the poorest parts of the world. Ensuring that investors are treated fairly under the rule of law is critical to trade and investment. It remains the case that the vast majority of all jobs in the world are created by private enterprise and not by governments. It is by being economically active, having a job, that citizens are able to elevate their living standards and importantly, to thrive on their own terms. Under our British Investment Partnerships approach, we will mobilise through investment partnerships up to £8,000 million of financing by 2025.

I am today announcing the first new initiatives and services under our five new UK Centres of Expertise on Economic Development. These will draw together UK expertise across business, the private sector, academia and government to advise on trade, green growth, citizen infrastructure, public finance, and financial services to provide support to our partners on economic growth and on job creation. British International Investment, BII, formerly CDC, has been significantly reformed over the last decade. Supported by a team of 600 experts, in 2010 there were just 47, BII is now the leading international development finance institution in the world. Deploying both patient and pioneer capital, it is a key private sector investor across the poor world, even investing in ports in the Horn of Africa.

BII now supports businesses that employ, directly and indirectly, around a million people in poorer countries, that’s potentially over one million families with food on their table, while paying $10 billion in tax into the treasuries of poorer countries over the last five years. It proves beyond doubt that the private sector is the engine of development and not, as some think, the enemy of it. I want BII to be at the very forefront of development finance. I take the inquiry by Parliament’s International Development Select Committee very seriously indeed. I stand ready to consider their recommendations and will be discussing and following up on these with the BII Board in the coming months to make sure that they continue to do all that they can to reduce poverty, deliver impact and support green transition.

When I had the privilege of being Secretary of State in DFID, I was proud that we were the most transparent development agency in the world. I am proud of BII, and I want to see it lead the way in demonstrating to the world how transparent a development finance institution can be, and I intend to publish a roadmap of BII commitments towards this. But our partnership with the private sector goes way beyond the work of BII. Along with UKEF, the British export credit guarantor, and the rest of British investment partners, we will boost living standards through British investment, while securing a return for our taxpayers. Next April our Prime Minister will host a UK-Africa Investment Summit in London, and we expect billions in investments and millions of jobs to result. Harnessing the power and potential of the private sector will be central to our strategy to help build prosperity.

Third, we are determined that we will not rest while people in the world are starving to death. I have met communities where children are dying from malnutrition. In Saada in Yemen, I’ve been to malnutrition wards where terrified mothers cradle emaciated little children, and where British taxpayer-funded medical care was their last and only hope. In Karamoja in Northern Uganda, where malnourished and emaciated children queued quietly in line for supplies of lifesaving emergency peanut-based paste paid for by the British taxpayer. It is frankly obscene that in the 21st century, and in our world of plenty, children are today slowly starving to death. So, next year we will spend £1,000 million on humanitarian relief, including in ways that build future resilience to climate impacts, and meet our commitments to climate change adaptation.

Funding to deliver water by lorry must always be accompanied by investment in water retention reservoir capacity for the future, so that subsequent crises are met with greater resilience. So, in New York on the 24th of May we will co-host an initial pledging event where we will announce our humanitarian funding for the Horn of Africa. The conference will be a key moment to secure funding for the largest humanitarian crisis in the world and highlight the urgent need for countries facing the brunt of climate impact to access climate finance. I am announcing that we will set up a new UK centre for reterin – veterinary innovation and manufacturing to apply recent vaccine tech breakthroughs to zoonotic disease threats that compound the danger to livestock in drought conditions.

We will also continue to champion British research and investment in partnership with others, which has produced new bio-fortified crops, like the vitamin A sweet potato, which are now feeding millions of smallholder farming families across the world, averting damage to health, physical and cognitive development. And the mobile money system M-PESA, developed thanks to a British taxpayer grant, enables money to be moved and weather alerts and farming advice to be swiftly received. This model has become a global beacon for financial inclusion across the continent and beyond.

So, from the depths of despair, we have seen how partnerships fuel the progress on which prosperity depends. So, towards the end of the year we will hold in London an event to bring together British and international expertise in tackling hunger and starvation, with the support of the academic, medical, research, philanthropic and NGO and charity community. This event will show our own taxpayers and constituents why this work is both in our national interest and the right thing to do. We will inaugurate the Child Nutrition Fund this autumn. Working with the Gates Foundation, the Children’s Investment Fund and UNICEF, Britain will lead what is an innovative, affordable way of tackling child wasting and build resilience to famine in some of the most vulnerable countries in the world.

And through co-financing, insurance products and other multipliers, working both bilaterally and through the multilateral system, we will augment and increase our own scarce and valuable funding. Our aim is to extract a quart from a pint pot, and we have made a good start with our significant co-financing plans with other partner countries. We recently announced a partnership that saw $2 million of the UK’s humanitarian funding package matched by Saudi Arabia, providing a boost to the World Food Programme and supporting those in desperate need in Somalia. We want to expand the scope of our aid relationship with Gulf partners, and have agreed to scale up our co-funded programmes from tens to hundreds of millions of pounds.

And so, I come, finally, to the last of our priorities. It is at the heart of everything we need to do. It is to generate the funding needed to tackle climate change and reassert the primacy of purpose of reaching the SDGs. Here the role of private sector investors will be central. For example, pension funds alone amount to $60 trillion, which will overwhelmingly drive forward the global response. The overarching aim of the Spring Meetings of the IMF and World Bank in Washington just two weeks ago was how we can radically scale up their resources to mobilise the hundreds of billions needed to deliver on the promises the international community has repeatedly made at the SDG summits and the COPs.

And make no mistake, as I said at the outset of my remarks today, we are now reaching a tipping point. We’ve heard the challenge of the poor world at our own COP in Glasgow, and the rising voices of outrage at last year’s COP in Egypt. By the time we reach COP28 at the end of this year, we will need to show clear and unmistakable progress. Of course, we need a clearer pipeline of oven-ready climate mitigation and adaptation programmes. We must recognise also that a country like Somalia simply doesn’t have the technical expertise to get through the due diligence gateways to access these global climate funds.

In Somalia, Britain is helping with invaluable technical expertise, and we can and will do more, but progress depends, above all, on the capacity of the international financial system, and that is why I made clear in Washington that the sweating of the balance sheets of The World Bank and the other huge multilateral development banks, combined with the creative financial engineering skills of a sector replete with expertise and experience, must now be brought to bear to produce a quantum of financial support which is unprecedented.

At The World Bank meetings, I approved changes to the capital adequacy reserve ratios. A reduction in the IBRD requirement limit from 20% to 19%, just 1%, releases for lending an additional $4 billion each and every year. Britain has announced a series of guarantees over the last 18 months to expand MDB lending to countries in Asia and Africa by $4.5 billion, and the UK is urging the IMF to increase still further its support for the poorest countries, including through targeted gold sales, none of which, incidentally, scores against our ODA budget, unless called, and is therefore incremental to the 0.55% we are investing this year.

And we are driving innovation in insurance. The UK is a founding member of the regional risk pools. The Caribbean risk pool pays out in 14 days and transfers $1.2 billion of risk annually off countries’ balance sheets to the private markets. Africa is transferring $1 billion of risk to date and paid out the first drought insurance support for Somalia. While we were in Washington, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Jeremy Hunt, signed off $5.3 billion of Special Drawing Rights to support two different funds delivering directly to the world’s poorest people. Again, this is in addition to our spending through the development budget and it is our experts in finance and development in the British team who are driving forward this agenda, precisely because of the expertise and geographical reach which exists in the British Foreign Office.

By the time we meet for the Annual Meetings in Marrakech in October, I want to see much greater progress across all the multilateral development banks towards the several hundred billions of dollars in additional financing the G20 expert group identified. All this additional financing capacity will only be able to benefit the poorest if we also tackle the global debt crisis. Official creditors must urgently reach an agreement on debt restructuring in Zambia and Ghana, there is no time to waste, and we are leading the way to avoid debt crises reoccurring in the future.

UKEF is the first export credit agency to offer to build in climate resilient debt clauses. These clauses allow debt repayments to be suspended when climate shocks, such as, hurricanes hit. This in turn, frees up resources quickly to respond to crisis. The first deals using these clauses will be announced over the next few months. By the end of this year, we hope that several other bilateral private and multilateral lenders will have agreed to offer the same clauses.

These steps, ladies and gentlemen, reflect the ambition of the Bridgetown Agenda, championed vigorously by the formidable voice and charismatic presence of the Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley. I have no doubt that this voice is going to be heard. Her agenda for progress is gaining widespread support and Britain and indeed, President Macron and France, are right behind it. To deliver on our funding promises, to reinvigorate the SDGs, to elevate the desperate lives too many lead in our world today, and literally to save our planet before it is too late. That voice is not going to be silenced.

And as we pass through the waypoints on our journey to COP28 at the end of this year, the G7 Leaders’ Summit, the Summit for New Global Finance Pact in Paris, the Africa Climate Action Summit, the G20 Leaders’ Summit, UNGA, including the SDG Summit in New York, the IMF World Bank Annual Meetings in Marrakech, the clamour for justice and the response of rich countries will be critically evaluated by our friends and our allies. But also, we are being watched by our constituents, particularly the younger generation, who are increasingly determined that those who are today the key decisionmakers on this vital agenda measure up to this task.

We must be honest and accept that we do not currently enjoy sufficient support for this wide-ranging and ambitious agenda from the British public. At the moment the Development Engagement Lab, comprising academics at the University of Birmingham and University College London, tell us that public support has been around the 50/50 mark for much of the last decade. But I am determined that we shall win over the doubters and drive up support to the 70/30 mark over the next ten years.

To do this, we will need to get out of London, and not to visit capital cities around the world, but to visit small towns and villages in our own United Kingdom, to explain what we do in a simple and straightforward language that everyone can relate to, with confidence, but also with humility, with facts, data and evidence, but also with human stories and compelling tales. Tales that are heartening, as well as sobering, drawing on the numerous examples and experiences that make up the story of great British International Development.

I intend to provide a communication platform to the people that the research shows the public trust the most. We will show that the generational ambitions for progress on climate, progress on women and girls, progress on business, working for sustainability not against it, are core to UK ambitions, with the final prize being greater prosperity in the world and the UK. And so, today I am issuing an invitation to all of you to partner with us to tell a story of progress in these universal challenges. Together, we must work to achieve a step change in both domestic understanding and support for the UK’s international development work, laying firmer foundations for a better future.

Together, I want us to drive more awareness, more action, more donations and ultimately, more support by engaging beyond current supporters. To show that we in government are serious about playing our part, I will be setting a new target for the new second Permanent Under-Secretary to improve public support, as measured by the Development Engagement Lab year on year, over the next decade. And I expect the Foreign Office to seize this opportunity to use the new K – the new UK International Development brand to convene a partnership with UK universities, the private sector and the thousands of household name charities. I expect to see a step change in the capacity and capability at the Foreign Office to engage positively the UK public, starting this year.

And later this year, we plan to invite tenders for a new international volunteering programme, similar to the former International Citizen Service. It will be an opportunity for young people to engage internationally and support our development work across the world. I am minded to publish a White Paper which will outline our plans for the next seven years, setting out a long-term direction for British International Development leadership until 2030. It will chart a course that will build on the International Development Strategy, accelerate our determination to deliver on climate change, and [audio cuts out – 37:43] international support to meet the Sustainable Development Goals.

This endeavour will draw on the full resources of the Foreign Office, bringing together our political and development expertise. It will underpin our commitment to delivering value for money to our taxpayers, reliability to our partners and friends around the world, and a commitment to meet the global goals that emphasises it is opportunity, not charity, that is needed. It is partnerships which secure progress and build shared prosperity. There are no quick fixes in development. We are in it for the long haul, and though the challenge is formidable, the rewards are immense. We have not a moment to lose. So, today, I pledged that the government will drive forward the UK’s fight to reduce poverty and boost climate security, to reassert our aspiration for global leadership and to say loudly and clearly, Britain is back. Thank you very much [applause].

Bronwen Maddox

Go on, have some water. Andrew Mitchell, thank you very much indeed for giving a speech here, and the Minister has kindly said that he will – that we can continue the session ‘til about ten or quarter past, because of the number of things he wanted to cover in that speech, and to give good time for your questions. Please do keep the questions coming in online, as well. There are some very good ones already. I’m going to ask him some questions first and then, we’ll come to the audience.

Thank you, fascinating speech, and we have the brand here on the screens which people can see. I wanted to start with your last words of, “Britain is back,” and they seem, while rousing, to have in them an admission that Britain retreated during the cut from 0.7% of GDP to 0.5, which as I think many people who spend time in this area know, knocked quite a lot of development agencies who are – and NGOs who are relying on this help. And I wonder whether people listening to this are going to say, “Look, it’s terrific to have a new brand, it’s terrific to have all this emphasis on partnership, but what about the money, and what about the reliability of the money? Yes, the Prime Minister’s pledged some more, 2.5 billion more, on this, but what about the predictability of Britain’s money?” because money may not be everything, but it’s really quite a lot in this area.

Andrew Mitchell MP

Well, of course, it’s true and I have a – as I told the Prime Minister when he asked me to come back, I said, “I have a criminal record as long as your arm of opposing the government on some of these things,” and collective responsibility is not retrospective. And what I’ve said I’ve said about the .7. But my job, it seems to me now, is to make it work in the way I’ve set out in some length in the speech. And what I would say to you about the money is that we shouldn’t focus on what we cannot do, we should focus on what we can do. And I think, frankly, that the difference between 0.7 and 0.55 – and when I was last in government, when Britain was undoubtedly a development superpower, we were spending about 0.55, so it’s about the same level of spending, but of course, a lot of the money is going under the OECD DAC rules to help people in their first year as refugees. So, of course that is true.

But what I hope I’ve set out quite clearly is that if you look at the multipliers of the money, they dwarf the difference between .55 and .7. I mean I talked about what we’re doing, what Britain is doing to help sweat the balance sheets of the multilateral development banks, and that one thing that, you know, our brilliant, brilliant team at The World Bank in Washington have been pushing through the bank, that one change in the capital adequacy ratio from 20 to 19, which produces – just that one change produces an extra $4 billion every year of spending.

You can see how we’ve used the guarantees particularly with the African Development Bank, the discussions that are going on at the moment about whether we can use some of these SDRs to boost the ability of the Africa Bank to spend. You’ve seen how we use insurance products, which are invented in London, which are now flowing. Obviously, you can’t insure against drought next year in Somalia, but you can insure it against atypical events across a pool of risk. So, there’s all of that, and there’s the co-financing. You know, we’ve done a small amount of co-financing, but negotiations are going on to do a lot more, where we put our money alongside a partner country’s money to achieve a common objective, and it’s a, sort of – for our taxpayers, it’s a, sort of, buy one get one free, as it were.

So, all these things act to increase our leverage, and it’s – and that’s on the finance side. But I want to stress that it’s actually dealing with the negative effects of the merger and galvanising this link, which DFID was so good at, of bringing together academia, the great thinking in British universities, the strength of thinktanks, you know, the leadership of some of the charities and international NGOs, which – we have such pride in what they do at times of disaster overseas. It’s also making sure that that is back, and that’s where the new brand is absolutely essential, because it means people will know, whether they’re domestic or international, how to interrelate with us on this matter.

Bronwen Maddox

But since you brought it up, let’s just spend a moment on, as you put it, the negative impacts of that merger of DFID and the FCO as it was. And it was a bumpy one, I think I can say uncontroversially, by Whitehall standards, though all of these machinery of government changes are very wearing of people’s energies and so on. It was one in which many DFID people felt they got the worst of the culture clash and quite a few left. How’s it gone now?

Andrew Mitchell MP

Well, the key thing – there are good things that can be done with a merger. You know, it removes any difficulty or mismatch on the overseas platforms. You know, they are led by the Ambassador or High Commissioner, and there were times, not under me I hasten to add, when DFID, sort of, pursued a separate foreign policy. You can’t do that, and the new arrangements stop that from happening, but there is actually another tremendous benefit to the merger, and it is this, that if you have a development objective, some of the ones I set out in my speech, and you have the might and reach and resourcefulness of the Foreign Office behind delivering these, then you can do it better. And there were times at DFID where we had such aims, but – and I would talk to William and William and I were joined at the hip when he was Foreign Secretary.

Bronwen Maddox

This would be William Hague.

Andrew Mitchell MP

William Hague, so – but I realised then and I now see how if you have a Foreign Office with all its connections and leadership behind, it makes a real difference. And consider this, Bronwen, as well, if – it’s conceivable that another party might win the next election. Were that to happen, if another party arrived in Whitehall and said, “We’re going to set up DFID again,” I think the reaction of many officials would be, “Oh my god, not more structural change. We can’t go on having this yo-yo effect when we get” – DFID – it was the third time it – the development element had been yanked out of the Foreign Office. And we have an opportunity now to create not the Overseas Development Agency of the past, but a centre for global public goods advancing that are fit for the 2030s.

And so, if we can now create a merged structure which really works for development and for foreign affairs together, we could have something that’s much more powerful and much better and then, you don’t feel the need to do what you described absolutely accurately as “machinery of government change,” which is enormously disruptive, would take years to settle down. You don’t need to do that if you can make this new system work. So, I am not in the business of trying to rubbish the merger, besides which you can see what I said about it in lurid language at the time, I’m not in the business to do that. I’m in the business of trying to make the new structure work really well for development, for the Foreign Office and for Britain, and for the people we seek to serve, the poorest in the world.

Bronwen Maddox

Thank you for that, and I must say for myself, I’m in the camp of wanting to be persuaded by that. That was absolutely the rationale of the merger, and it does have a lot of force to it, but it then brings us to the question of what Britain is trying to do in its development policy. Is it trying to advance foreign policy aims? Is it trying for the old goals of poverty reduction?

Is it trying – you’ve referred a couple of times to national interest, and I just want to weave in here an interesting question that’s come in online from Alita Nazel, and she says, “Thank you for your keynote speech. There is a body of evidence,” not cited, “that development projects and programmes which support the donor’s national interests don’t have good outcomes in terms of effectiveness, impact, sustainability.” And I just wondered what you can say to us. You’ve listed lots of great causes and we’ll come onto some of them and – women and girls, and many people would absolutely share your ringing statement that it is obscene that children are starving in this world today, but what would you say is the purpose now of British development?

Andrew Mitchell MP

Well, there are, in my view, artificial differences being cited there. You know, you can’t pursue your national interest and also try and elevate the dreadful circumstances in which the poorest in the world live. I don’t believe that’s true. You know, development is about stopping conflict and promoting prosperity. It’s about trying to stop it starting, once it started, stopping it, and once it’s over, reconciling people, and it’s about prosperity, having a job, you know, being economically active. That’s how you lift – in the rich world and the poor world that’s how you lift your standard of living.

And if you stop conflict overseas it benefits us. If you build prosperity overseas, if you help countries to trade their way out of poverty, to understand about how you achieve investment, if you do all these things, they come to London to use our capital markets. The – it’s a completely symbiotic relationship, and also, people say, “Well, you can’t do climate change and tackle poverty,” of course you can. they’re two sides of the same coin, as I said in the speech, and we are committed – you ask about our objectives. We are committed to tackling the extremes of grinding poverty for very good reasons. I mean, it’s in our own interest, ‘cause these circumstances as we know breed – they are – they lead people to fall prey to the terrorist recruiter. So, we are very clear about the importance of tackling the extremes of poverty, but also, the other side of that coin is tackling climate change, ‘cause it’s the poorest in the world who, as I said in my speech, suffer first and hardest from this.

Bronwen Maddox

Thanks for that. Excuse me. You say you’re going to do something about money laundering through the UK. What?

Andrew Mitchell MP

Well, we’ve boos – we’ve quite significantly boosted the National Crime Agency, which has, you know, law and order responsibilities. It all takes a very long time. I notice that James Ibori, who we were after when I was the DFID Secretary, took about ten years to get the money returned to Nigeria that had come through. And we have a real responsibility for this because so much money is laundered through Britain – through London and British Overseas Territories.

You may recall that Margaret Hodge and I fought to get the open registers of beneficial ownership, which is about transparency, through the House of Commons, resisted by the British Government. It’s now British Government policy, I may say, to do that, but that was a way. And through that work that we did together with many others, you know, I learnt about how difficult this all is, because the baddies have the best Lawyers, they have the best Accountants, they have the best structures, and, you know, if you’re the National Crime Agency it’s tough. You know, you have a limited budget and if you put it all on red and red goes wrong, then you don’t have money for pursuing other things. It’s a very complex area, and when I was in government before it was the City of London Police who were the, sort of, leading edge of going after this.

So, what we’re going to do is we’re going to try and empower, in a variety of ways, the bill that went through last year, a variety of ways, to try and even out the odds so that the baddies don’t have all the best tunes and that we can bear down on this, and the key thing is transparency. You have to be able to track the money, freeze it and then, try and get it back to the people from whom it was stolen.

Bronwen Maddox

Thanks very much for that. It is a cause that many writers at Chatham House are very concerned about.

Andrew Mitchell MP

And we invite…

Bronwen Maddox

Yeah.

Andrew Mitchell MP

…you know, every – I mean, Oliver Bullough has written a most brilliant book – series of books on this, but we invite people who care about this and have expertise to help.

Bronwen Maddox

Thank you, we’ll take you up on that, thank you. You also talked a lot about women, and – women and girls, and what could be done to help them, and many people will be glad to hear that, but I imagine that both in Afghanistan and those Afghan women who have made it to the UK, or other places that they wanted to get to, that will sound rather bitter. What would you say to them?

Andrew Mitchell MP

Well, I learnt when I – there’s no merit in being in opposition, as I tell my colleagues. You can’t do anything in opposition, you can only say things. But when I was in opposition, I went round the world sitting at the feet of people who really know about development and I learnt, you know, very, very fast that unless you see development through the eyes of girls and women, for the – particularly for the three reasons I set out in the speech, you’re missing the point. You don’t understand development unless you see it through those eyes. And that is why we are very committed to stopping this rollback of women’s rights and, you know, that’s Afghanistan, but there are also things that are happening in America which are rolling back women’s rights, and I think that is appalling.

So, we are seeking to advance the rights of women in every way we can. Now, you talk about Afghanistan. It is extremely difficult, and of course, when the Taliban do these things, if the humanitarian agencies say, “Right, well we’re not going to – if you do this, we’re” – if you say, “We can’t have women who work in our agencies were not going to be here,” you don’t affect the elite in the Taliban, you affect the people on the ground who you’re trying to help. So, the steps you can take are, you know, quite limited, but we advance it through negotiation.

I was talking to Martin Griffiths who heads up UNOCHA, a brilliant international Civil Servant, he goes back a long way, he’s been talking to the Haqqanis in Afghanistan and he made the point to me that, you know, there are some effective and powerful Taliban leaders who completely reject this treatment of women, and who have insisted that in the areas that they’re responsible for, secondary schools are open and women go – and girls go to them. So, you know, a lot of it is about using the weight of the Foreign Office’s negotiation power, its ability to move the dial, and through negotiation, trying to make progress. And I think – you mentioned Afghanistan specifically, I fear that that is the only way that we – is open to us at the moment.

Bronwen Maddox

Hmmm. How much does the success of what we do depend on what the US chooses to do? We have – we’re in a particularly uncertain point about the US’s intentions for its role in the world, and indeed, the money it committed to these kind of things.

Andrew Mitchell MP

Well, the US last year paid for 82% of the relief in the Horn of Africa, so you’re quite right about their very dominant position, and as – I think it was Mrs Thatcher who once said, “When the Brits and the Americans agree on something, it tends to happen.” I think that’s rather less true now than it was when she said it. I mean, I – you know, we work very closely with America. Sam Power who runs USAID is a force of nature. We agree on a lot of things. We’re going to do more things together. I think that’s a very good thing.

They are a natural partner, we think alike on not everything at all, but we think alike on a lot of things, and, you know, on humanitarian, let’s be fair about it, whatever else anyone says about America, without the American input on humanitarian relief, an awful lot more children would be dying, would be emaciated and the plight of women would be a lot worse. And if you look at what America did for example in the Horn of Africa through PEPFAR, I mean it is absolutely extraordinary. It was George Bush Jr who did that, absolutely extraordinary.

Bronwen Maddox

Hmmm. Okay, now, I’ll ask you one final one before we come to other questions. I mean this in no way as a tricky question, but when you said you were minded to publish a White Paper…

Andrew Mitchell MP

They’re the most difficult ones, they are.

Bronwen Maddox

Yeah. Are you going to publish a White Paper?

Andrew Mitchell MP

We are minded to publish it. As you know, Bronwen, better than anyone, Whitehall is a complex negotiation. So, I’m announcing today that we are minded to publish a White Paper and I very much hope that all the parts will come together, and why do I say that? Because if we can publish a White Paper – this is not a particularly party-political area, we need to get these SDGs back on track. If we publish a White Paper for seven years it takes us to 2030, which is the period – the second half of the SDGs that we are trying to address. We want to have a policy that whoever wins the next election, and I’m not – I’m very confident the Conservatives will win it under Rishi’s leadership, but I want to make sure that there is a programme which endures any change of government, and which can deliver both on the SDGs and on our climate promises.

For the reasons I set out in the speech, we are at a tipping point. There is going to be an explosion of anger at the end of this year if we don’t deliver on the things that we have promised. So, I think a White Paper would be extremely good. It would incorporate – everyone could be part of it, it would incorporate the learning, the expertise that Britain likes to champion and bring together. We have huge convening power, we can do that, and we – I think we can do something that would show real world leadership, if we can deliver it.

Bronwen Maddox

Thank you. Let’s go to questions. Let me take them in pairs, and let me take the two in the front, here.

Dr Tamsyn Barton

Thank you. Tamsyn Barton from the Independent Commission for Aid Impact. It’s great to see this increased ambition, this energy, this focus on what you can do. I just wanted to ask you to say a bit more about the 29% of the budget in 2022, the aid budget, which was spent on refugees in the UK, that you mentioned. So, we at ICAI just produced a report last month that showed that’s very poor value for money.

Bronwen Maddox

Okay. Thanks.

Tamsyn Barton

What are you able to do about that?

Bronwen Maddox

Thank you, and there are tonnes of hands up, so if people can keep their questions short, please. Next to you.

John Wilson

John Wilson, and I’m a member of this institute and RUSI, and a Journalist. That was a very aspirational speech which you made, Minister, but in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph there was an article in which it says, and I quote, “China is preparing for war with the West.” What are you doing in your department to factor that into the future state of the world in which you have to work?

Andrew Mitchell MP

So, if I – if you’ll forgive me for a very short answer for that. The – a brilliant speech was made at the Mansion House the night before last on precisely the issue of China, by the Foreign Secretary. And I would commend the speech rather than the comment in the Telegraph yesterday, to show that our engagement with China is constructive but clear, and I think that’s the great thing about the Foreign Secretary’s speech.

On the spending on refugees, it is the value for – this new star chamber chaired by me and John Glen is designed to bear down on precisely the work that the ICAI so brilliantly encapsulates. And you have warned us about value for money, and that – it shows you this government working well. You know, you’ve shown us what needs to be done, and this Cross-Whitehall Committee will now seek to give it effect.

And on the spending, you know, I know a lot of money’s being spent in bedsits in Bedford and not in Africa, but under the OECD DAC rules, the first year of a refugee’s cost in the UK is legitimate spending, it’s – under the rules it is absolutely legitimate, and I do not – I’m not asking for a change in the rules, because if you open Pandora’s Box, you don’t know what’s going to come out of those negotiations. They are extremely difficult to change, the rules, ‘cause you’ve got to get everyone onside. And so, you know, it’s – under the rules, it’s right, and that’s why we have to suck it up, but we need to do everything we can to make sure that the issue is as temporary as possible, that we get value for money for the spend, and that we can reallocate it as soon as possible to the longer-term purposes of development.

Bronwen Maddox

Thanks very much. Alright, here on the aisle.

Yunani Shipco

My name is Yunani Shipco, from Nigeria. Mr Minister, you have…

Andrew Mitchell MP

From?

Yunani Shipco

Nigeria. Mr Minister, you have listed so many good programmes for Africa, but my question is, what are you going to do to prevent the proliferation of arms from conflict zones so that it will not go to the wrong hands of the terrorist organisation in West Africa? Because without peace, there will not be any meaningful development. Thank you very much.

Bronwen Maddox

Thank you very much for that, and over here in the middle, thanks.

Claire Melamed

Thank you very much. Claire Melamed from the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data. That was a fantastic speech, thank you so much. Underpinning good ex – good spending, the finance and so on, that’s needed, is the need for good data, and we heard in the UN’s report today…

Bronwen Maddox

Please, no, a question, and a really short question.

Claire Melamed

Okay, sorry. So, I want to know, as you’re thinking about partnerships, how are you picking up the agenda on results and transparency that you championed last time in this new global context in joining the arg – the global argument for better data and use of technology to create the inves – the information on which all of this progress depends?

Andrew Mitchell MP

Well, you’re quite right about data and you’ll have seen that this is something that the Prime Minister is particularly keen on, as well, using the latest technology that we can bring to bear. And the results agenda, which you rightly say that I championed when I was last in government, is absolutely at the heart of what we want to do. You’ve got to be able to show what this money is achieving, these big programmes are achieving, if you’re to sustain support. So, I completely agree with you about the importance of data, and you’ll have heard what I said about this big platform at the end of my speech, that we are working closely with universities which specialise in the – this sort of work.

On West Africa, you know, the prelitio – proliferation of weapons, we saw it after Libya, we see it coming from the Middle East, I completely agree with you. I mean, the direct way in which we are engaging in West Africa at the moment is through the Accra Initiative. Britain and other countries are seeking to put some flesh on the bones of the Accra Initiative to make sure that it’s a genuine partnership which does what countries want us to do there, and I hope very much that that will bear fruit. There’s a lot of work being done by the Ministry of Defence and by the Foreign Office on trying to see how we can advance that agenda.

Bronwen Maddox

Thank you. Over here on the aisle.

Jack McConnell

Thank you very much. Jack McConnell, Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on the Global Goals, on which I strongly welcome the Minister’s firm commitment to being minded to produce a White Paper on Agenda 2030, which is very welcome in the commitment to cross-party working, too. Ten years ago, Andrew, I think you would’ve said more about conflict in a speech of this sort, and peacekeeping, peacebuilding, and conflict prevention, and I just wondered where your thoughts are on that as an overriding priority for this work and for the FCDO?

Bronwen Maddox

Thank you, and I’m going to add to that one from Richard Ottaway online, saying, “Population growth remains a serious issue, particularly in Africa. The Cameron government had a strong policy of addressing the unmet need for contraception. Do we still have a similar policy?” Thank you.

Andrew Mitchell MP

Shall I do those two or…?

Bronwen Maddox

Do those two.

Andrew Mitchell MP

Okay. So…

Bronwen Maddox

And I’m coming over there.

Andrew Mitchell MP

So, many thanks for Jack’s support for the White Paper. Please voice it loudly in your different circles, and thank you very much, indeed, for the work that you are doing through the APPGs, which we value enormously and we’re very grateful for that. In terms of conflict prevention, I mean there were – those are the two key things, conflict prevention and building prosperity, that we seek to champion. I didn’t say as much as I used to say about conflict prevention, but I think it’s broadly agreed, and when in front of an audience as sophisticated as this one, I thought that I wouldn’t dwell too long on that. But I mean you’re absolutely right that conflict prevention, we see it all too vividly around the world, is absolutely critical. Conflict is development in reverse, so I completely agree with you about that.

On – Richard Ottaway, of course, for many years was – occupied a key position in the House of Commons on championing issues of population, and ten years ago we had a Family Planning Summit in London, which tried to make sure that women can decide for themselves whether and when they have children. And these two points come together absolutely in Africa, where you have populations which are growing very substantially because there is so much unmet need and so little contraceptive prevalence, and if you look at countries like Niger and Mali, that is especially true. They are hugely challenged in every way, from security, economically, in all walks of life, and it’s made far worse by the fact that women want access to contraception and can’t get hold of it. So, it’s a very important part of the agenda and I can assure Sir Richard that we are continuing to champion it, as he would wish from his time in the House of Commons.

Bronwen Maddox

Thank you. Right over here by the door, yes.

Dr Nadeau

Hello. Dr Nadeau, I’m a Psychologist with the National Health Service and worked with the American Red Cross in disaster mental health relief. We know that mental health negatively impacts educational attainment, quality of life, and is – particularly has a role in perpetration of violence and survivors of violence with women and girls. What role does mental health have at the highest levels in your organisation? Does it have a seat at the table, and what is your vision for addressing mental health issues in developing countries in partnerships such as telemental health or other means?

Bronwen Maddox

Thank you, and one more on that aisle, yeah, somewhere around there. Got a cluster of hands. I’ll try and come to more of you.

Member

Good morning, Minister, thank you very much. My name is [Chidi Nwanu – 66:14]. I’m a member of Chatham House, I’m a reservist with [11BA – 66:16] dealing with culture and engagement. I just wanted to see a – follow up on the moderator’s question about matching Britain’s foreign policy with international aid. You mentioned, you know, feeding paste to Ugan…

Bronwen Maddox

Could you speak a bit more slowly, please?

Member

Sorry.

Bronwen Maddox

Yeah.

Member

I’m trying to compress everything.

Bronwen Maddox

No, no, no, no, thank you so much for that, but still, just a little bit more slowly.

Member

Yes, apologies.

Andrew Mitchell MP

It’s what you were marrying with aid that I missed.

Member

Britain’s foreign policy objectives with aid. So, you mentioned Uganda and, you know, feeding children there, but then part of the problem is, you know, Yoweri Museveni, you know, staying in power and, you know, his poor governance. Again, poor governance in Nigeria, where you mentioned – you were talking about women and girls, you know, solving the problems with Boko Haram, but you’ve also mentioned money laundering and the NCA, but the incoming President of Nigeria was a – has a money laundering conviction for narcotics trafficking.

Now, the questions I have is, how does Britain then square that circle of, you know, this continuous support for fairly questionable leaders, and then, you know, cleaning up their mess afterwards? Is – wouldn’t it be easier to focus on, you know, the source of the problem, rather than the follow-up? Thank you.

Bronwen Maddox

Thank you.

Andrew Mitchell MP

So, on the mental health point, it is very much part of our thinking, and if you look at programmes like Education Cannot Wait, which are emergency programmes for children that are out of school because of conflicts, it’s built into those programmes, and we are acutely aware – I think it’s since COVID that we’ve become aware – it’s got a much higher salience. It’s no longer, you know, in the British NHS, the Cinderella area as it was 20 years ago, thanks, no doubt, to people like you. But I mean I think the salience is great, actually, and it needs to be.

Your point about the – Nigeria in particular, I mean Britain has relationships with countries. We’re not like China, China has relations with elites, and there are great weaknesses in that model, and we don’t, we have relationships with countries. Of course, we work with governments, we don’t usually provide them with budget support, but we work with them, but it’s – our relationship is with the people we’re trying to help.

And, you know, you talked about Museveni being in power for a long time, which is totally true, but you’ve just had a rumbustious election in Nigeria. I met all the candidates, I’m sure that there will be people who will say the election wasn’t perfect, but I think, you know, it’s delivered a result and we will work with the new leadership of Nigeria. I hope to be at the inauguration of the new President in a few weeks’ time, and we will support Nigeria, and in particular we will support Nigeria in the work it’s doing to bear down on Boko Haram and terrorism, which is causing such havoc in the north of the country.

Bronwen Maddox

Thank you, and there was the mental health poi – oh, we’ve done it. Thanks. Just over there, here in the middle. We’ve got a lot of hands up, I’m not going to be able to come to everyone, but two over here, please.

Ian Mitchell

Hi, congratulations on the agenda this morning. I’m Ian Mitchell from the Center for Global Development. You mentioned 50% of the population are in support of development and 50% are sceptical. Where would you put the Chancellor and the Prime Minister in those two categories, and can you persuade them, particularly the Chancellor, to relax some of his conditions on how the aid budget is spent?

Bronwen Maddox

Thank you for that, and one more over there.

Romilly Greenhill

Is that me? Yeah.

Bronwen Maddox

Yes, it is you, yeah.

Romilly Greenhill

Great, thank you. Romilly Greenhill from the ONE Campaign. Thank you, Minister, I thought that was a really inspiring speech, really enjoyed a lot of it. Two points I wanted to make, just coming back on Tamsyn’s point on the refugee spending, you are, of course, entirely correct to say that this is allowed under the DAC rules, but it is the case that we are spending twice as much as the average of OECD countries. As Tamsyn said, we spend 29%, the OECD average is 14%. I don’t believe that we are taking twice as many refugees as the average, so there is a real question, and reiterating that point on value for money, we are overspending, even within the rules.

The other point I wanted to make is, I really value and welcome what you said on the Bridgetown Agenda, as you know we’re very supportive of that. One thing the UK could really concretely do…

Bronwen Maddox

Could you make it a question, please?

Romilly Greenhill

Sorry, a que – no, it’s – my question is, will the UK consider increasing its SDR recycling to 30%? We are now behind countries like Japan…

Bronwen Maddox

Okay, enough – thank you.

Romilly Greenhill

…and France. Thank you.

Bronwen Maddox

Thank you, thank you. Facts are always welcome, except when we’re running out of time, thank you.

Andrew Mitchell MP

So, two very – two – al – I mean all the questions are very interesting, but two perhaps more – slightly more pointed questions. I mean, first of all, I would just like to point out that I have on my desk at home prominently displayed a list of the 26 Conservative Members of Parliament who voted against the cuts in .7, one of whom was Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. So, you know, he has wider responsibilities now, but I have always felt that he understands and supports this agenda. So, do bear that mind.

And also, as is clear from the Integrated Review refresh, the Prime Minister is focused much more now on development than some of his predecessors were, and he is determined to drive this agenda forward. And after all, you know, he brought me back, with my long criminal record on this stuff, so I think that suggests that he’s interested in getting results. And he’s got quite a thick skin and he’s interested in getting results, and I think we should take note of what he said in the Integrated Review.

To Romilly’s question, I mean, you know, the first meeting, it had to be put back, it was going to take place this week, of this ODA board, will take place very shortly. And it will, I can, without breaching any Whitehall secrets, tell you it will be focusing on exactly the value for money point that you have made. But I want to emphasise that, you know, this is within the OECD DAC rules and I don’t think it’s sensible for me, as a Development Minister, to spend my time attacking that which would be very difficult to change. I think I should bear down on the cost, do everything I can to make sure that it is time limited.

Bronwen Maddox

Thank you, and with the…

Andrew Mitchell MP

Oh – I’m sorry, on – and on SDRs, we are having – there’s quite an elevated discussion going on about these SDRs with the Treasury, and the last, I thought, extremely compelling letter that went to the Treasury got a six-line PS from the Chancellor on the response, manuscript PS on the response. There is a discussion going on, and it’s a proper discussion. The Treasury normally, as everyone in this room will know, if – normally, to spending requests from the Treasury, the letter that comes back essentially says, “No, bugger off,” that’s what it essentially says. But this is a discussion about the SDRs where there’s a lot of very creative minds working in the same direction, and I hope that we will see some element of progress on that.

Bronwen Maddox

Alright, I’m going to squeeze in two questions, I hope you’re really brief. Here on the aisle, you’ve been very patient, thank you, and here in the front, and that’s all I can do, but there is the coffee break where you can quiz Andrew Mitchell for ten more minutes.

Christa Rottensteiner

Thank you, Minister, for this inspirational speech. My name is Christa Rottensteiner and I’m the Head of IOM in the UK, the International Organisation for Migration. You talked about the rules-based international system and the importance of this, so my question is, how does this fit with current discussions about leaving the European Convention on Human Rights, and also the debate that’s going on around the Illegal Migration Bill, where there has been criticism that this undermines the International Refugee Convention? Thank you.

Bronwen Maddox

And here.

Michael Folkerson

Michael Folkerson from the Canadian High Commission. Thank you, Minister, just wanted to ask about international priorities. You mentioned Bridgetown Agenda, fantastic. Anything else that you’d like to see discussed, pushed forward, G7, G20 and other fora like that? Thanks.

Bronwen Maddox

Thank you.

Andrew Mitchell MP

Well, that’s quite a long question, there. I want people to focus on the Bridgetown Agenda, and the Indians have made clear that at the G20, development is right at the front of what they want to do, and I hope that – there were some good programmes put forward at the British G7/G8 and we should have some consistency and drive forward these things. We don’t need too many new mechanisms. You need to deliver on what’s been promised, so I would urge people to focus on the Bridgetown Agenda.

To your question about the IOM and, you know, this is a very difficult area, I think I would say two things. I don’t think there’s any question of Britain leaving the ECHR, and the Prime Minister, I think, has made that pretty clear. So, although we are testing the limits of what you can do under the ECHR, and we are not the first government in Britain to do that, it was done by the last Labour Government as well, I think that leaving the ECHR is incredibly unlikely to happen. It was built by British Ministers and British Lawyers after the Second World War, it is extremely important. You can imagine the effect of Britain withdrawing, what it would be on other countries with malign intent who would also feel they could withdraw.

It would be a huge thread pulled out of the international system, which is already on the backfoot, as I set out in my speech, with, in my view, catastrophic effects that it is on the backfoot. And the point I would make is that I had a lot to say about this when I was on the backbenches, but I do think that Rishi has drilled into the detail and has come up with a series of things, not just the Rwanda proposal, but a series of things which make the situation better. Above all, he has radically improved the relationship with France, which is essential to – if you’re to do anything on this.

But let’s be clear, no democratic government can allow what is happening of people coming across in an unstructured and arbitrary way, no government can expect to get re-elected if it doesn’t tackle that problem. And I think it is obscene, also, that smugglers, the modern-day equivalent of the slave trader, are putting these people with all their savings into leaky boats to cross the busiest shipping lane in the world. I think it is absolutely appalling and we should all accept that the government is trying to do, in an honest and open way, everything it can to stop this horrible trade.

Bronwen Maddox

Thank you for that. We are going to have to stop there, but as I said, the Minister has kindly agreed to have coffee, or I suspect talk while holding a cup of coffee, upstairs, ‘cause I know there are a lot more questions. There were terrific questions online, thank you for sending them, from Heather Saunders and Sophie Efange on women, an interesting one from Frances Guy and the multilateral finance, which we couldn’t get onto, but I wish we could.

There are floods of questions here and lots on Sudan, and I wonder if I could point you to our podcast, weekly podcast, out tomorrow, Independent Thinking, but it is on Sudan with our many experts but one, Mohammed Hassan al-Ta’ishi, with the most moving account at the end of why he’s chosen to stay in Khartoum to help his country, out tomorrow morning. But with that, can you join me in thanking Andrew Mitchell [applause].