Lynne Takes on the World

Hornsey & Wood Green MP Lynne Featherstone, who has been the LibDems’ international development spokesperson in the House of Commons for the past five months, today addressed a lunchtime meeting in parliament of the All Party Group on International Development (APGOOD, administered by the Overseas Development Institute). This was chaired by her counterpart in the House of Lords (and constituent), Baroness Lindsay Northover. It was the third in a series of presentations by the three main political parties on development issues — though perversely, the Labour Party programmed a debate on overseas development between the various contenders for the Labour deputy leadership at exactly the same time today, just down the committee room corridor. Pure coincidence, I am sure. Not.

Lynne paid tribute to ‘St.’ Hilary Benn, who is currently Secretary of State for International Development (though probably not for much longer), as a nice bloke, but she lambasted certain aspects of his department, DFID, or rather, the Blair government – notably for the way that some of DFID’s policies are in obvious contradiction to those of other government departments, such as the MOD (aid versus arm sales) and DEFRA (development projects versus accelerating environmenal degradation). She was particularly exercised by climate change. And she felt that the government’s termination of the inquiry into the BAe Saudi bribes scandal totally undermined this country’s credibility as a proponent of good governance.

I raised the concern that the whole dynamic of the aid and trade debate and other development issues has shifted, as the vertical pattern of relationships between the rich northern industrialised countries and the poor, southern developing economies has been changed into a more horizontal pattern, in which the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China) have become competitors in their dealings with poor states. I’m not sure that Britain or the other Western donor nations have yet taken this on board. And as Lynne responded, maybe we need some new sort of international body or set-up to confront the new realities.

Link: www.odi.org.uk